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.
ETTY HILLESUMI 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.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
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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’m afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.
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Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
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If one burdens the future with one’s worries, it cannot grow organically. I am filled with confidence, not that I shall succeed in worldly things, but that even when things go badly for me I shall still find life good and worth living.
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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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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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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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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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I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
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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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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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To live fully, outwardly and inwardly, not to ignore the external reality for the sake of the inner life, or the reverse, that’s quite a task.
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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.
ETTY HILLESUM