Quote

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, but that even when things go badly for me I shall still find life good and worth living.

Etty Hillesum

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Etty Hillesum
Age: 29 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 15
Died: 1943
Died: November 30
Biographer
Diarist
Teacher
Woman Of Letters
Writer
Esther Hillesum
Still
Grow
Worries
Find
Worry
Worldly
Even
Shall
Badly
Good
Grows
Burden
Things
Future
Filled
Life
Living
Confidence
Cannot
Succeed
Organically
Stills
Worth
Burdens

More quotes by Etty Hillesum

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Become simple and live simply, not only within yourself but also in your everyday dealings. Don’t make ripples all around you, don’t try to be interesting, keep your distance, be honest, fight the desire to be thought fascinating by the outside world.
Etty Hillesum
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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.
Etty Hillesum
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Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
Etty Hillesum
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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 Hillesum
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Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.
Etty Hillesum
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Before, I always lived in anticipation . . . that it was all a preparation for something else, something greater, more genuine. But that feeling has dropped away from me completely. I live here and now, this minute, this day, to the full, and the life is worth living.
Etty Hillesum
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I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
Etty Hillesum
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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. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Re-establish contact with a slice of eternity.
Etty Hillesum
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A large group of us were crowded into the Gestapo hall, and at that moment the circumstances of all our lives were the same. All of us occupied the same space, the men behind the desk no less than those about to be questioned. What distinguished each of us was only our inner attitude.
Etty Hillesum
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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
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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.
Etty Hillesum
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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.
Etty Hillesum
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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.
Etty Hillesum
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The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
Etty Hillesum
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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
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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.
Etty Hillesum
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A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body, or rather it is as if my body has been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face.
Etty Hillesum
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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.
Etty Hillesum
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The externals are simply so many props everything we need is within us.
Etty Hillesum
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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.
Etty Hillesum