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.
ETTY HILLESUMEverything 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.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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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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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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I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
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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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I don’t think I have nerves of steel, far from it, but I can certainly stand up to things. I am not afraid to look suffering straight in the eyes.
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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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Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
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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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Such words as ‘God’ and ‘Death’ and ‘Suffering’ and ‘Eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.
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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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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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The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
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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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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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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.
ETTY HILLESUM