Etty Hillesum Quotes

#1. 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

#2. I'm afraid I did not pray hard enough last night.

Etty Hillesum

#3. Every day I shall put my papers in order and every day I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day to day.

Etty Hillesum

#4. 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

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

Etty Hillesum

#6. One must also accept that one has 'uncreative' moments. The more honestly one can accept that, the quicker these moments will pass.

Etty Hillesum

#7. Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

Etty Hillesum

#8. Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.

Etty Hillesum

#9. 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

#10. That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.

Etty Hillesum

#11. If one finds the strength to deal with small things, one finds it to deal with the large ones as well.

Etty Hillesum

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

Etty Hillesum

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.

Etty Hillesum

#19. 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

#20. I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.

Etty Hillesum

#21. 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

#22. That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.

Etty Hillesum

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.

Etty Hillesum

#28. 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

#29. To live fully, outwardly and inwardly, not to ignore the external reality for the sake of the inner life, or the reverse, that's quite a task

Etty Hillesum

#30. Most people write off their longing for friends and family as so many losses in their lives, when they should count the fact that their heart is able to long so hard and to love so much as among their greatest blessings.

Etty Hillesum

#31. Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.

Etty Hillesum

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.

Etty Hillesum

#37. Sometimes my day is crammed full of people and talk and yet I have the feeling of living in utter peace and quiet. And the tree outside my window, in the evenings, is a greater experience than all those people put together.

Etty Hillesum

#38. It is sheer hell in this house. I would have to be quite a writer to describe it properly. Anyhow, I sprang from the chaos and it is my business to pull myself out of it.

Etty Hillesum

#39. 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

#40. 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

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

Etty Hillesum

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

Etty Hillesum

#43. Everything is chance, or nothing is chance. If I believed the first, I would be unable to live on, but I am not yet fully convinced of the second.

Etty Hillesum

#44. 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

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

Etty Hillesum

#46. I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.

Etty Hillesum

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. 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