To live fully, outwardly and inwardly, not to ignore the external reality for the sake of the inner life, or the reverse, that's quite a task
Etty HillesumRead
Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can't think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Re-establish contact with a slice of eternity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the limitations of thinking in resolving emotional challenges, suggesting the need for a deeper, more passive engagement with one's feelings.
Etty Hillesum highlights the idea that while thinking can be valuable for intellectual pursuits, it often falls short in addressing emotional hardships. Instead of trying to reason through feelings, one should embrace a state of receptivity and connect with a deeper understanding of existence, which can lead to healing and clarity.
Themes
ThinkingEmotionsPassivityEternityListening
In practice
Example use cases
In a mental health seminar, to illustrate the importance of emotional awareness.
More from Etty Hillesum
All quotes →The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
Etty HillesumRead
We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
Etty HillesumRead
Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
Etty HillesumRead
I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
Etty HillesumRead
I really see no other solution than to turn inwards and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned.
Etty HillesumRead
Similar quotes
What’s more, you’re loads better than you think you are.” “So why is it I get to thinking that way?” I puzzled. “That’s because you’re only half-living.” she said briskly. “The other half is still untapped somewhere.
Haruki MurakamiRead
The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.
George Bernard ShawRead
The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.
Mark TwainRead
The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.
Isaac AsimovRead
You know, when I sit in meetings and things are very tense and people take things extremely seriously and they invest a lot of their ego, I sometimes think to myself, 'Come on, you know, there's life and there's death and there is love.' And all of that ego business is nonsense compared to that.
Christine LagardeRead
Effortlessness is the ability to slow down and listen for the spaces between the joints... Deep within all things there is a natural rhythm, a music of opening and closing, expansion and contraction.
Wayne MullerRead