Etty Hillesum Quotes

“Through them all and right to the end, the deeper sound in her heart was not despair but, extraordinarily, a strange kind of joy which would not leave her.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“ideological fervour is a distraction from the fundamental task of all seekers of truth which is to explore what lies in the complex and needy hearts of human beings – our own first.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“Such words as “god” and “death” and “suffering” and “eternity” are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.12”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“The most fundamental theological idea for her lay at the root of the Jewish tradition: all human beings bear the Image of God within them, however buried and forgotten that image may be; all are created to grow into his likeness.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“Five elements in her journey There were five key elements in that journey: a relationship of unconditional acceptance within which she felt safe to explore her experience; intellectual exploration into the thought of some key writers, notably Jung and Rilke; the influence of her mentor, a person of faith, who introduced her to key religious texts, notably the Psalms, the New Testament and St Augustine, as well as several others; her own response to the urge she felt from within her, to pray; and the development of particular disciplines of the spiritual life.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“if we just care enough, God is in safe hands with us, despite everything …”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“impatient with the ‘primitive’ word ‘God’, she gives it a new definition and describes God as ‘our greatest and most continuous inner adventure’.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Etty Hillesum was that what she experienced did not embitter or dull her heart. And, because that was where her faith came from, still she believed.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“there are many miracles in a human life. My own is one long sequence of inner miracles, and it’s good to be able to say so again to somebody.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“Today I was filled with a terrible despair’, she writes. But then she rallies adding, ‘… and I shall have to come to terms with that as well.’ The only way to deal with that also, is acceptance.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“It has been brought home forcibly to me here how every atom of hatred added to the world makes it an even more inhospitable place.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“see no alternative: each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“we have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“She sees that all his bullying behaviour grew out of a deep unattended-to need, a profound loneliness of the spirit. This is where the roots of tyranny lie.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“In her mind it does not get to the root of things. Only attention to the human heart, she believes, will root out hatred, not the tired politics of her time.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“And at the heart of this rigorously disciplined inner life was her openness to the Mystery of the Divine experienced within her as vulnerable Presence.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“… one of my latest achievements: the realisation that every moment gives birth to a new moment, full of fresh potential, and sometimes like an unexpected present. And that one must not cling to moments of malaise and prolong them needlessly, because in so doing one may prevent the birth of a richer moment. Life courses through one as a constant current in a great series of moments …”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“So let this be the aim of 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.9”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“Paul Tillich writes that such courage – the courage to affirm life in the face of despair; to care and serve and give and smile upon others in such a situation – is more than a revealing of the life of an integrated person. It is a revealing of God: of the power of ‘being-itself’.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“The despair is not denied: it exists, but it is entirely swallowed up in courageous living.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“This gives courage an altogether deeper meaning. It is ‘the courage to be’ in spite of death, fate, meaninglessness or despair. It is about affirming life in the face of what seems unalterable in your situation. You do not pretend that despair is not there. You acknowledge it: it is part of you. But, by living courageously in the face of it, you rob it of its power. This is the courage of despair. To live with this kind of courage is immensely challenging. It is the challenge of becoming an integrated and fully human person; and, as we shall see, it is about more even than integration.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us. And we have to take everything that comes: the bad with the good which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the bad.18”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“to deconstruct collective systems of thought – including our own – and ask how and why they have come about, and what lies behind them. People on both sides of conflicts can become blind. All this is only possible if there is no hatred, for only then can we be sufficiently dispassionate to have some chance of seeing.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“First, she refused to hate her enemy. It is, simply in itself, a disturbing stance, for it means we have to think. To refuse to hate is, in the final analysis, to refuse to see someone, or a group of people – who manifestly are an enemy bent on your destruction – as an ‘enemy’. It is to live with this paradox and involves – even as your country defends itself against their hatred – trying to pay attention to the wider and more complex context of their lives, and ask, searchingly, why are they, and why are we, caught up in such hatred? Who are we to them, and who are they to us?”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“that institutions own and control it, about the question that lies at the heart of it, and how we think about its boundaries. Drawing on its diverse wisdoms, she invites us to find and explore our personal practice of faith.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“She insisted and went on showing by the person she was that, despite everything, life is beautiful and good. She could not help but express and bear witness to this power of life which she knew within her and which she saw around her. This was her ‘basic tune’ which went on playing, whatever happened.”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“there must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times’45”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“I am deeply grateful to You for leaving me so free of bitterness and hate, with so much calm acceptance.’33”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed

“There are no frontiers between suffering people …”
― Patrick Woodhouse, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed