Etty Hillesum Quotes

Be gentle and kind with every one, and severe with yourself.

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.

I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself.

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

The first step to loving someone else is to recognize the evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them.

Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.

The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong.

Every single human being is trying his best. We're all doing the best we can. But when we believe what we think, we have to live out those thoughts. When there's chaos in our heads, there's chaos in our lives. When there's hurt in our thinking, there's hurt in our lives. Love thy neighbor as thyself? I always have. When I hated me, I hated you. That's how it works. If I hate someone, I'm mistaking them for me, and solutions remain hidden.

It is a severe rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many allowances, and we make so few to our neighbour.

So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.

So then, when I speak to you, I speak to myself. If I seem to warn or to rebuke you, it is not so much you, as myself, to whom the warning or the rebuke is addressed.

I'm human, I'm not perfect. I make mistakes all the time, but I guess my job is to keep those mistakes to myself, which I'm already fine doing and just try to be the best I can be for those kids.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

Personal responsibility is not only recognizing the errors of our ways. Personal responsibility lies in our willingness and ability to correct those errors individually and collectively.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

Lord, where we are wrong, make us willing to change; where we are right, make us easy to live with.

You have to find the peace and patience within yourself to be a model and an example to others and not judge.

You ever try to go a day without judgment?

Find fault with thyself rather than with others.

I have respect for what other people believe. What I believe in my own life is that it's a search for how I can do things better, whether it's being a better man or a better father or finding ways for myself to improve.

People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.

A man really determines himself by what he does.

If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.

It's not easy. I make snap judgments, too, and I start to write people off. And then I start to remind myself of how I'm constantly asking judges not to write people off. And so then I try to resist it.

I've learned a lot. Being more compassionate.