Etty Hillesum Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Peace, World, Moral

  Etty Hillesum (1985). “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”

  141 Copy quote

• ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to cosmic sadness? ... Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge-from which new sorrows will be born for others-then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.

  Etty Hillesum

  Revenge, Grief, Sadness

  98 Copy quote

• By 'coming to terms with life' I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.

  Etty Hillesum

  Mean, Eye, Reality

  100 Copy quote

• 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.

  Etty Hillesum

  Gratitude, Unexpected Gifts, Expectations

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.466, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  103 Copy quote

• 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.

  Etty Hillesum

  Appreciation, Prayer, Stress

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.305, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  117 Copy quote

• We human beings cause monstrous conditions, but precisely because we cause them we soon learn to adapt ourselves to them. Only if we become such that we can no longer adapt ourselves, only if, deep inside, we rebel against every kind of evil, will we be able to put a stop to it. ... while everything within us does not yet scream out in protest, so long will we find ways of adapting ourselves, and the horrors will continue.

  Etty Hillesum

  Long, Evil, Rebel

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.308, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  109 Copy quote

• 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

  Feelings, Preparation, Anticipation

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.39, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  62 Copy quote

• Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

  Etty Hillesum

  Life Is, Despite

  Etty Hillesum (1986). “Letters from Westerbork”, Pantheon

  88 Copy quote

• 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

  Emotional, Thinking, Different

  Etty Hillesum (1985). “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”

  90 Copy quote

• It is the only thing we can do. Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate that we add to this world makes it sill more inhospitable

  Etty Hillesum

  Hate, Healing, Thinking

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.529, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  52 Copy quote

• 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

  Peace, Believe, Lessons To Be Learned

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.245, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  68 Copy quote

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

  Etty Hillesum

  Should, Willing, Wounds

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.550, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  77 Copy quote

• All disasters stem from us. Why is there a war? Perhaps because now and then I might be inclined to snap at my neighbour. Because I and my neighbour and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing each day, the love which is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live.

  Etty Hillesum

  War, Fighting, Giving

  Etty Hillesum (1985). “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”

  94 Copy quote

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

  Etty Hillesum

  Giving Up, Suffering, Awful

  Etty Hillesum (1985). “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”

  58 Copy quote

• 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

  Silence, Gestures, Sometimes

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.131, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  17 Copy quote

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

  Etty Hillesum

  Peace, World, Moral Duty

  Etty Hillesum (1985). “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  Rain, Fall, Acceptance

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.483, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  77 Copy quote

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

  Etty Hillesum

  Destiny, Men, Shapes

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.258, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  40 Copy quote

• 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.

  Etty Hillesum

  Promise, Special, Trying

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.154, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  45 Copy quote

• We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies. We make mental provisions for the days to come, and everything turns out differently, quite differently. Sufficient unto the day. The things that have to be done must be done, and for the rest we must not allow ourselves to become infested with thousands of petty fears and worries.

  Etty Hillesum

  Fighting, Worry, Done

  81 Copy quote

• I feel like a small battlefield in which the problems, or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can hope to do is keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield. After all, the problems must be accommodated, have somewhere to struggle and come to rest and we, poor little humans, must put our inner space at their service and not run away.

  Etty Hillesum

  Inspirational, Running, Struggle

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.63, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  60 Copy quote

• 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

  Gratitude, Overwhelming Urge, Hands

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.320, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  78 Copy quote

• 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

  Determination, Giving Up, Persistence

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.498, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  43 Copy quote

• 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

  Sorrow, Share, Broads

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.308, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• Sometimes I long for a convent cell, with the sublime wisdom of centuries set out on bookshelves all along the wall and a view across the cornfields--there must be cornfields and they must wave in the breeze--and there I would immerse myself in the wisdom of the ages and in myself. Then I might perhaps find peace and clarity. But that would be no great feat. It is right here, in this very place, in the here and the now, that I must find them.

  Etty Hillesum

  Wall, Views, Cells

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.71, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  20 Copy quote

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