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 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.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
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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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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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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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I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
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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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That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.
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Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
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Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.
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And now that I don’t want to own anything any more and am free, now I suddenly own everything, now my inner riches are immeasurable.
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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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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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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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The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
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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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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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Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
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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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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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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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