Etty Hillesum Quotes

41 quotes in 759 categories

• There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it:…
• As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more good things of life become unexpected…
• I feel like a small battlefield in which the problems, or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can…
• 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…
• 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.
• 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…
• Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.
• Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.
• Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that's not too awful either, but never, never give up.
• Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can't think your way out of emotional difficulties.…
• We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
• 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…
• Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.
• I'm afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.
• 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.
• I don't think I have nerves of steel, far from it, but I can certainly stand up to things. I am not afraid to look…
• The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
• 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,…
• I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
• 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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