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 HILLESUMWe should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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.
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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.
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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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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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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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It is the only thing we can do. Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate that we add to this world makes it sill more inhospitable
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I’m afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.
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One must also accept that one has ‘uncreative’ moments. The more honestly one can accept that, the quicker these moments will pass.
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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.
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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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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 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