Life cannot be captured in a few axioms. And that is just what I keep trying to do. But it won’t work, for life is full of endless nuances and cannot be captured in just a few formulae.
ETTY HILLESUMEvery word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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I know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them; they pass through me, like life itself, as a broad eternal stream…and life continues.
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Suffering has always been with us; does it really matter in what form it comes? All that matters is how we bear it and how we fit it into our lives.
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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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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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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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After each creative act one has to be sustained by one’s strength of character, by a moral sense, by I don’t know what, lest one tumble.
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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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Life is good, after all…and that’s what stays with me, even now, even when I’m about to be packed off to Poland.
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Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.
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Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that’s not too awful either, but never, never give up.
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That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.
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Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.
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Everything is chance, or nothing is chance. If I believed the first, I would be unable to live on, but I am not yet fully convinced of the second.
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Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
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I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
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