Quotes from Etty Hillesum

I myself am made up of so many people.

I know the intimate gestures he uses with women, but I still want to know the gestures he uses with God.

I never worry about tomorrow. For instance I know I am going to have to leave here very soon, and I haven't the faintest idea where I'll end up or how I shall earn my living, but I know that something will turn up. 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.

So let this be the aim of the meditation: to turn one's innermost being into a vast empty plain, with none of that treacherous undergrowth to impede the view. So that something of 'God' can enter you, and something of 'Love', too.

Lord, give me wisdom, not knowledge. Or rather the knowledge that leads to wisdom and true happiness and not the kind that leads to power.

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.

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

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