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.
ETTY HILLESUMEvery word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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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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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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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.
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Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
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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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Our desire must be like a slow and stately ship, sailing across endless oceans, never in search of safe anchorage. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, it will find mooring for a moment.
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Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that’s not too awful either, but never, never give up.
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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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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
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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’m afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.
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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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Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
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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






