Etty Hillesum Quotes

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.

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 gifts that we accept with gratitude.

Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

Such words as 'God' and 'Death' and 'Suffering' and 'Eternity' are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.

We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.

Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that's not too awful either, but never, never give up.

Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.

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.

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.

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: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.

How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.

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 suffering straight in the eyes.

The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.

And now that I don't want to own anything any more and am free, now I suddenly own everything, now my inner riches are immeasurable.

One must also accept that one has 'uncreative' moments. The more honestly one can accept that, the quicker these moments will pass.

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.

Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.

If one finds the strength to deal with small things, one finds it to deal with the large ones as well.

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.

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

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.

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.

That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.

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.

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.

The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.

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.

We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.

Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.

I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.

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.

I'm afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.

Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.

I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.

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.

We have to fight them daily like fleas those many small worries about the morrow for they sap our energies.

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.

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.

The externals are simply so many props everything we need is within us.

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.