“One day I shall surely be able to say to Ilse Blumenthal, ‘Yes, life is beautiful, and I value it anew at the end of every day, even though I now that the sons of mothers, and you are one such mother, are being murdered in concentration camps. And you must be able to bear your sorrow; even if it seems to crush you, you will be able to stand up again, for human beings are so strong, and your sorrow must become an integral part of yourself, part of your body and your soul, you mustn’t run away from it, but bear it like an adult. Do not relieve your feelings through hatred, do not seek to be avenged on all German mothers, for they, too, sorrow at this very moment for their slain and murdered sons. Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge from which new sorrows will be born for others- then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply. And if you have given sorrow the space its gentle origins demand, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich. So beautiful and so rich that it makes you want to believe in G-d.’”
-Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum was a Jewish woman who lived in Holland during World War II. She wrote diaries which were published over thirty years after they were written. She, an incredibly intelligent and insightful human being, wrote about her relationship with G-d, views on life's meaning and beauty, interactions with lovers, and non-violent battles with Nazis. I recommend her diaries as a works of beauty, philosophy, and a new way to look at life that softens a person's soul to loving other human beings and being able to find their beauty no matter what.
A quote from Frederick Nietzsche
"How much one is able to endure: distress, want, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude. Fundamentally one can cope with everything else, born as one is to a subterranean life of struggle; one emerges again adn again into the light, one experiences again and again one's golden hour of victory- and then stands forth as one was born, unbreakable, tensed, ready for new, even harder, remoter things, like a bow that distress only serves to draw tauter."
- Frederick Nietzsche
(On the Genealogy of Morals)
