“The times through which we are passing — and even more terrifying, those through which our children and grandchildren will pass — are difficult ones. Difficulty, however, has always been life’s stimulant, awakening and goading all our impulses, both good and bad, in order to make us overleap the obstacle which has suddenly risen before us…. At the instant when a man contracts like a spring in order to undertake the leap, inside us the entire life of the planet likewise contracts and develops its propulsion. This is when we clearly sense that simplest of truths which we often forget in comfortable, barren moments of ease: that man is not immortal, but rather serves Something or Someone that is immortal.”
Nicholas Kazantzakis, Report to Greco, p. 412