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 HILLESUMGreed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
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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 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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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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Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.
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The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.
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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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I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
ETTY HILLESUM