That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.
ETTY HILLESUMHow rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.
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The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.
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How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.
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I really see no other solution than to turn inwards and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned.
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I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one’s inner life. And that too is a deed.
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The fact is I don’t lead a simple enough inner life. I indulge in excesses, bacchanalia of the spirit. Perhaps I identify too much with everything I read and study. Someone like Dostoevsky still shatters me.
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If one finds the strength to deal with small things, one finds it to deal with the large ones as well.
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Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God.
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Sometimes I feel that every word spoken and every gesture made merely serve to exacerbate misunderstandings. Then what I would really like is to escape into a great silence and impose that silence on everyone else.
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I’m afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.
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We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
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Every day I shall put my papers in order and every day I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day to day.
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I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.
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Sometimes my day is crammed full of people and talk and yet I have the feeling of living in utter peace and quiet. And the tree outside my window, in the evenings, is a greater experience than all those people put together.
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I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
ETTY HILLESUM