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When I Pray, I Never Pray For Myself, Always For Others, Or Else I Hold A Silly, Naive, Or Deadly Serious Dialogue With What Is Deepest Inside Me, Which For The Sake Of Convenience I Call God. Praying To God For Something For Yourself Strikes Me As Being Too Childish For Words. To Pray For Another's Well-being Is Something I Find Childish As Well; One Should Only Pray That Another Should Have Enough Strength To Shoulder His Burden. If You Do That, You Lend Him Some Of Your Own Strength.

-Etty Hillesum

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When I Pray, I

Etty Hillesum

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When I Pray, I Never Pray For Myself, Always For Others, Or Else I Hold A Silly, Naive, Or Deadly Serious Dialogue With What Is Deepest Inside Me, Which For The Sake Of Convenience I Call God. Praying To God For Something For Yourself Strikes Me As Being Too Childish For Words. To Pray For Another's Well-being Is Something I Find Childish As Well; One Should Only Pray That Another Should Have Enough Strength To Shoulder His Burden. If You Do That, You Lend Him Some Of Your Own Strength.

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And I Believe That I Will Never Be Able To Hate Any Human Being For His So-called 'wickedness,' That I Shall Only Hate The Evil That Is Within Me, Though Hate Is Perhaps Putting It Too Strongly Even Then. In Any Case, We Cannot Be Lax Enough In What We Demand Of Others And Strict Enough In What We Demand Of Ourselves.

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

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