Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
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Anand Thakur
Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
ETTY HILLESUM
We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
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.
ETTY HILLESUM
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.
ETTY HILLESUM
There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.
ETTY HILLESUM
That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.
ETTY HILLESUM
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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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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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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Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.
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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.
ETTY HILLESUM
Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
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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.
ETTY HILLESUM
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.
ETTY HILLESUM
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
The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
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