Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum
Esther "Etty" Hillesumwas the author of confessional letters and diaries which describe both her religious awakening and the persecutions of Jewish people in Amsterdam during the German occupation. In 1943 she was deported and killed in Auschwitz concentration camp...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth15 January 1914
god hands trying
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.
trying nuance life-is
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.
actual determination exhausted left strength
I would . . . be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
redeeming search
We are always in search of the redeeming formula, the crystallizing thought.
determination would-be exhausted
I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.
needs props
The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.
writing islands black
Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.
greed intellectual information
Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.
destiny luck firsts
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.
men people important
Slowly but surely I have been soaking Rilke up these last few months: the man, his work and his life. And that is probably the only right way with literature, with study, with people or with anything else: to let it all soak in, to let it all mature slowly inside you until it has become a part of yourself. That, too, is a growing process. Everything is a growing process. And in between, emotions and sensations that strike you like lightning. But still the most important thing is the organic process of growing.
determination home night
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.
character creative moral
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.
fighting lakes worry
We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
missing missing-out
That fear of missing out on things makes you miss out on everything.