I keep remembering from my early student days how I would walk at night through the streets, my hands bunched into fists in the pocket of my coat, my head hunched deep into my collar, and how I used to say, 'I want to work, I shall work'--and then I would come back home and be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
Etty HillesumHow rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.
Etty HillesumBecome simple and live simply, not only within yourself but also in your everyday dealings. Donโt make ripples all around you, donโt try to be interesting, keep your distance, be honest, fight the desire to be thought fascinating by the outside world.
Etty HillesumSometimes 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 Hillesumought 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