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The quotation are from: Etty. The letter and Diaries of Etty Hillesum. 1941-1943. Complete and unabridged. Edited by Klaas A.D. Smelik. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans.
- 15th of March 1941:
If there were only one decent German, the he should be cherished despite that whole barbaric gang, and because of that one decent German it is wrong to pour hatred over an entire people.
- 15th of March 1941:
Knowledge is power, but wisdom alone is freedom.
(from: Will Durant)
- 19th of June 1941:
What matters is to abandon that little ego of yours for work and for other people. I am once more most dissatisfied with you. You are again overindulging yourself with your soul. Once again you have lost control of yourself.
- 5th of October 1941:
You must learn to trust your own experiences, observations and rather than believe that you have to get everything out of books.
- 7th of October 1941:
Development does not take time into account.
- 21th of October 1941:
As it is, my studies are not so much a quest for knowledge as a search for what lies behind things - to put it very humble and simply: the search for the riddle of life. Which is problably something every human being looks for in his own way. Yet the riddle of life does not exist.
- 22th of October 1941:
Once it is taken for a philosophical truth that a single life is worth nothing when people are dying by the thousand every moment, only then is the destruction complete.
- 30th of November 1941:
The heavy and the light must be accepted as two different aspects of my being.
- 19th of December 1941:
Snatches of prose, upright and almost fully fledged, march through my head at times, though heaven only knows where they are going.
- 19th of December 1941:
When grace makes one of its rare entrances, it must be greeted with a well-honed technique.
- 22th of December 1941:
Leave the night to the night and the day to the day, don't letthe memories of the one do less than justice to the other, allow every moment of a friendship to develop to its own potential instead of comparing, belittling an inhibiting its growth with the memory of another moment.
- 23th of December 1941:
Constant, steadfast, patient
- 23th of December 1941:
Where does tolerance stop and spinelessness begin?
- 29th of December 1941:
Simplicity that is mere superficiality is simplicity fraught with complications. Simplicity really isn't all that simple.
- 14th of January 1942:
I have gained the courage to make mistakes, so to speak, and yet retain my self-confidence when I do.
- 27th of February 1942:
I shall travel through many countries and shall tour the faces of the people there like so many landscapes. I shall have something to say from whatever corner of the world I shall happen to be in, in my own small way, but it will be my way for all that.
- 8th of March 1942:
Loyal, one must be truly loyal to oneself and to the values one treasures, and have the courage to make oneself onpopular with others for the sake of that loyalty.
- 8th of March 1942:
... and then I must listen, listen everywhere, listen to the very essence of things.
- 28th of March 1942:
In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves.
- 28th of March 1942:
Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that it is due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and couragely, 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.
- 29th of March 1942:
Despite the many people, the many questions, the varied studies, one must always carry a great silence within one, a silence into which one can always withdraw, even in the midst of all hustle and bustle and in the midst of the most animated conversations.
- 1th of April 1942:
To be very unobtrusive, and very insignificant, always striving for more simplicity. Yes, to 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 so hard to be interesting, keep your distance, be honest, fight the desire to be thought fascinating by the outside world.
- 24th of April 1942:
It is certain that the world dies a seperate death for each one of us, and yet the world still exists.
- 18th of May 1942:
The threat grows ever greater, and terror increases from day to day. I draw prayer round me like a dark protective wall, withdraw inside it as one might into a convent cell and then step outside agian, calmer and stronger and more collected again. Withdrawing into the closed cell of prayer is becoming an ever greater reality for me as well as a necessity. That inner concentration erects high walls around me within which I can find my way back to myself, gather myself tohether into one whole, away from all distractions. I can imagin times to come when I shall stay on my knees for days on end waiting until the protective walls are strong enough to prevent my going to pieces altogether, my being lost and utterly devastated.
- 18th of May 1942:
That inner concentrationerects high walls around mewithin which I can find my way back to myself, gather myself together into one whole, away from all distractions.
- 24th of May 1942:
And I believe that this, too, is part of the process of growing awareness: to understand one's various states of mind, to keep a grip on them and to put them in perspective instead of mistaking them for absolution.
- 29th of May 1942:
One should not add the slighest discord tot this world already so full of discord.
- 29th of May 1942:
This keeps impressing itself on me: I shall always prefer an untidy desk of my own, covered with books and papers, to even the most ideal and harmonious marriage bed.
- 2th of June 1942:
In years to come it will be our pride and our victory that every crushing blow they tried to inflict upon us turned into its opposite, serving only to boost our strength and our development.
- 3th of June 1942:
But I know that life will always consist of getting up and going to sleep and a few meals and daily chors, and only in between can we try to come to grips with the great things, the ones we think really matter.
- 5th of June 1942:
They (= the words) should simply emphasize the silence....What matters is the right relationship between words and the wordlessness, the wordlessness in which much more happens than in all the words one can string together.
- 10th of June 1942:
Sometimes it is as if there were a great workshop inside me where hard labouring is being done, much hammering and who knows what else. And sometimes it is I were made of granite inside, a chunk of rock ceaselessly lashed and hollowed by the powerful currents. A granite cave being hollowed out more and more, and having contours and shapes cut into it. Perhaps the shapes will lie ready inside me one day with sharply defined outlines, and all I will have to do then is to copy what I find in myself.
- 10th of June 1942:
Yet it is part of our culture, of our education, call it what you will, not to give any words addressed to usthe option of vanishing into thin air. Where it makes sense and seems necessary, there must be some response to even the slightest appeal. ---
My feeling is that there are probably a lot of helpless, unanswered questions floating about to and fro in the atmosphere between one person and another and that if everyone, in his own way and according to his abilities, were to start rescuing these questions from their helpless quest by providing an answer, a roof over their heads, there wouldn't be such a terrible multitude of homeless questions.
- 10th of June 1942:
If those insights I gain from contact with the noblest of minds while while sitting at my desk do not extend tot the samllest details of daily life, of something of that great awareness of human values does not permeate my faintest breath then 'spriritual life', living in the spirit, or whatever else I might call it one day in a more enlightened moment, will be meaningless.
- 11th of June 1942:
One need not cocnceal one's disquiet and sadness, one should bear them and forbear them, but not surrender to them as unreservedly as if there were nothing else in the world.
- 11th of June 1942:
And isn't that how it should be? Not taking one's own gloominess, sadness or what have you out on others by being unfriendly to us? When we suffer, surely we don't have to make others suffer with us? If only people would begin to realize that! When in this respect the education of mankind could be started.
- 17th of June 1942:
If you have enough energy for the small things in life, then you 'll also have it for the big things.
- 21th of June 1942:
As long as one small street is left to us, the whole sky still stretches above us.
- 2th of October 1942:
Flowers and fruits grow wherever they planted, isn't that what it all means? And shouldn't we affirm that meaning?
- 13th of October 1942:
We would be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.
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