I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
ETTY HILLESUMSuch 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.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
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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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It is the only thing we can do. Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate that we add to this world makes it sill more inhospitable
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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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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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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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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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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.
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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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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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We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
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Our desire must be like a slow and stately ship, sailing across endless oceans, never in search of safe anchorage. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, it will find mooring for a moment.
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Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
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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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Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.
ETTY HILLESUM