If one finds the strength to deal with small things, one finds it to deal with the large ones as well.
ETTY HILLESUMEverything 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.
More Etty Hillesum Quotes
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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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That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.
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I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
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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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Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.
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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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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 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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Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
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After each creative act one has to be sustained by one’s strength of character, by a moral sense, by I don’t know what, lest one tumble.
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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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I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
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Every day I shall put my papers in order and every day I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day to day.
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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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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.
ETTY HILLESUM







