Etty Hillesum Quotes

Solitude is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it.

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

I aspire only to silence.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.

I've always felt that the truth is in the silence.

I like the idea of going to one of those retreats where you don't speak - like, silence for five days.

Take time to be quiet.

Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk.

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .

How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.

The teaching arises out of the stillness. But when I'm alone, there's only the stillness, and that is my favorite place.

Cultivating quietness is a missing discipline today...the quietness needed to nurture an inner life hid in Christ.

Remain quiet. Don't feel you have to talk all the time. Go within and you will see the Loveliness behind all beauty.

Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.

There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.

Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them.

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.

We don't think about pilgrimage in this country. We don't think about meditation. The idea of taking a six-week walk is totally foreign to most Americans. But it's probably exactly what we need.

When you walk 10 hours, 11 hours a day by yourself, you are doing a walking meditation.

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.

Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.