Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that’s not too awful either, but never, never give up.
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 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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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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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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The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
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That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.
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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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We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
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The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.
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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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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.
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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 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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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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I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
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Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
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