Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
ETTY HILLESUM
Related Topics
Anand Thakur
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.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
-
Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
ETTY HILLESUM -
Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.
ETTY HILLESUM -
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.
ETTY HILLESUM -
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.
ETTY HILLESUM -
We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
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 -
Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.
ETTY HILLESUM -
I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
ETTY HILLESUM -
How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.
ETTY HILLESUM -
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.
ETTY HILLESUM -
Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
ETTY HILLESUM -
I’m afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.
ETTY HILLESUM -
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 -
The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.
ETTY HILLESUM -
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.
ETTY HILLESUM -
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.
ETTY HILLESUM