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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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Etty Hillesum
Age: 29 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 15
Died: 1943
Died: November 30
Biographer
Diarist
Teacher
Woman Of Letters
Writer
Esther Hillesum
Moral
Sense
Character
Tumble
Lest
Sustained
Strength
Creative

More quotes by Etty Hillesum

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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
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We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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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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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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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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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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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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 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
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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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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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The externals are simply so many props everything we need is within us.
Etty Hillesum
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Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.
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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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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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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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 more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
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