A capacious mind which rises above and speeds ahead of the spillth and swirls of world affairs, political, sociological or technological.  To Zorba, but a pile of rusty old rifles. Here’s to similar levels of detachment from time to time.

‘Why, all these – kings, democracies, plebiscites, deputies, fiddle-faddle!”  Zorba had got so far beyond contemporary events that they had already ceased to be anything but out-of-date rubbish. Certainly, to him, telegraphy, steam-ships and engines, current morality and religion must have appeared like rusty old rifles. His mind progressed much faster than the world.’

See, in turn, Mervyn Peake’s description of rusty old weapons. 

Source: Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis, trans. Carl Wildman (Faber & Faber), p. 18

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