Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
ETTY HILLESUMSometimes 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.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.
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I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
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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 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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The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.
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One must also accept that one has ‘uncreative’ moments. The more honestly one can accept that, the quicker these moments will pass.
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I’m afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.
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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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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.
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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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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 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 would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
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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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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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