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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Anand Thakur
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.
ETTY HILLESUM
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 HILLESUM
Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
ETTY HILLESUM
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.
ETTY HILLESUM
Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
ETTY HILLESUM
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
ETTY HILLESUM
I’m afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.
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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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If one finds the strength to deal with small things, one finds it to deal with the large ones as well.
ETTY HILLESUM
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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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.
ETTY HILLESUM
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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How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.
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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.
ETTY HILLESUM
Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.
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