Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The externals are simply so many props everything we need is within us.
Etty Hillesum
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Etty Hillesum
Age: 29 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 15
Died: 1943
Died: November 30
Biographer
Diarist
Teacher
Woman Of Letters
Writer
Esther Hillesum
Many
Needs
Externals
Props
Simply
Within
Everything
Need
More quotes by Etty Hillesum
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
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
And I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called 'wickedness,' that I shall only hate the evil that is within me, though hate is perhaps putting it too strongly even then. In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves.
Etty Hillesum
Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
Etty Hillesum
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
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
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.
Etty Hillesum
We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
Etty Hillesum
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
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
Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that's not too awful either, but never, never give up.
Etty Hillesum
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
That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.
Etty Hillesum
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
Etty Hillesum
