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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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Etty Hillesum
Age: 29 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 15
Died: 1943
Died: November 30
Biographer
Diarist
Teacher
Woman Of Letters
Writer
Esther Hillesum
Find
Suddenly
Stately
Must
Endless
Unexpectedly
Never
Across
Oceans
Like
Ocean
Sailing
Safe
Ship
Moment
Ships
Desire
Search
Moments
Slow
Anchorage

More quotes by 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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Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that's not too awful either, but never, never give up.
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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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
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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.
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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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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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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The externals are simply so many props everything we need is within us.
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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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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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
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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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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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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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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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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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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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.
Etty Hillesum