Quotes by Dutch Authors - Page 4

Where friendship blooms, life is reborn.
Vincent van Gogh
when we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus
Corrie ten Boom
The feminine way is to look at the potential that is available and the masculine way is to look at what is not working and to find a solution to change that. So when we balance these two energies together, the solution is to co-create a New Earth together with Nature where we look at the potential of each and everyone involved to make a difference.
Maurice Spees
He had the tendency, unfortunate for a new member of the committee, to like if not the rich themselves, at least their activities and surroundings, and to dislike the poor; a woman in rags toting a baby, barefoot children, made him feel sadistic rather than compassionate.His socialism, then, had the impatience and unfriendliness of a fashionable doctor forced to attend a tramp run over in the street.
Hans Koningsberger
Beneath the surface of the protective parts of trauma survivors there exists an undamaged essence, a Self that is confident, curious, and calm, a Self that has been sheltered from destruction by the various protectors that have emerged in their efforts to ensure survival. Once those protectors trust that it is safe to separate, the Self will spontaneously emerge, and the parts can be enlisted in the healing process
Bessel A. van der Kolk
Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.
Etty Hillesum
The externals are simply so many props everything we need is within us.
Etty Hillesum
Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.
Baruch Spinoza
(on forgiveness) Didn't he and I stand together before an all seeing God convicted of the same murder? For I had murdered him with my heart and my tongue.
Corrie ten Boom
Life is like a film screen: pictures come, make an impression, go, and then make a place for new pictures with new impressions which obscure the previous ones. Some of those old pictures fade, but the impressions they leave will never pass away. Such an impression is the image of Hein Sietsma -- a joyful Christian who loved life so much but was still willing to give it to the great, good, and holy cause.
Diet Eman
Let your feelings flow freely, accept each one of them, know that they are your feelings and no one is to blame for them. Live from your essence and watch your feelings flow; only when you accept them can you understand the story of your life.
Patricia Selbert
On any journey, we must find out where we are before we can plan the first step.
Kathy Boevink
The word is always a word for others. Words need to be heard. When we give words to what we are living, these words need to be received and responded to. A speaker needs a listener. A writer needs a reader.When the flesh – the lived human experience – becomes word, communitycan develop. When we say, 'Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listento what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us.Wait until you hear whom we met,' we call people together and make ourlives into lives for others. The word brings us together and calls usinto community. When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part ofa body of people.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
There always seem to be very rich people, no matter how poor the country,” Thenoclon said.
Andrew Ashling
Am I afraid to die? I am every time I let myself be seduced by the noisy voices of my world telling me that my "little life" is all I have and advising me to cling to it with all my might. But when I let these voices move to the background of my life and listen to that small soft voice calling me the Beloved, I know that there is nothing to fear and that dying is the greatest act of love, the act that leads me into the eternal embrace of my God whose love is everlasting.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
Anne Frank
He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.
Abraham Kuyper
They thought we were stupid to do it, (hide Jews) of course; in fact, it was beyond their comprehension that we would risk so much for Jews.
Diet Eman
And here we see again that we do not decide our own lives. Dieneke, even if we won't see each other again on earth, we will never be sorry for what we did, that we took this stand.
Diet Eman
I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!
Frans de Waal
I often think of you all, one cannot do what one wants in life. The more you feel attached to a spot, the more ruthlessly you are compelled to leave it, but the memories remain, and one remembers - as in a looking glass, darkly - one's absent friends.
Vincent van Gogh
We all live with the objective of being happy our lives are all different and yet the same.
Anne Frank
The German experience brings us face to face with the major problem of the revolution in Western Europe. In these countries, the old bourgeois mode of production and the centuries-old civilisation which has developed with it have completely impressed themselves upon the thoughts and feelings of the popular masses. Hence, the mentality and inner character of the masses here is quite different from that in the countries of the East, who have not experienced the rule of bourgeois culture; and this is what distinguishes the different courses that the revolution has taken in the East and the West.
Anton Pannekoek
To explain the matter I will employ a simile, which yet, I confess is very dissimilar; but its dissimilitude is greatly in favour of my sentiments. A rich man bestows, on a poor and famishing beggar, alms by which he may be able to maintain himself and his family. Does it cease to be a pure gift, because the beggar extends his hand to receive it? Can it be said with propriety, that 'the alms depended partly on THE LIBERALITY of the Donor, and partly on THE LIBERTY of the Receiver,' though the latter would not have possessed the alms unless he had received it by stretching out his hand? Can it be correctly said, BECAUSE THE BEGGAR IS ALWAYS PREPARED TO RECEIVE, that 'he can have the alms, or not have it, just as he pleases?' If these assertions cannot be truly made about a beggar who receives alms, how much less can they be made about the gift of faith, for the receiving of which far more acts of Divine Grace are required!
James Arminius
To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life
Vincent van Gogh
Infuriatingly stupid analysts - especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world - wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were all about Islam saving Aristotle and the zero, which medieval Muslim scholars had done more than eight hundred years ago; about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent. These were fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
He does good to himself who does good to his friend.
Erasmus
Living and struggling, for others, is a great and dignified life. Whereas, living for oneself exhibits just egocentric and own importance, since mostly falls under it.
Ehsan Sehgal
Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
Baruch Spinoza
First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Our desire must be like a slow and stately ship sailing across endless oceans never in search of safe anchorage. Then suddenly unexpectedly it will find mooring for a moment.
Etty Hillesum
The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole,but true beauty in a Woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she knows.
Audrey Hepburn
Perhaps the relevant truth- and it's one whose existence was apparent to my wife, and I'm sure to much of the world, long before it became apparent to me-is that we all find ourselves in temporal currents and unless you're paying attention you'll discover, often too late, that an undertow of weeks or of years has pulled you deep into trouble.
Joseph O'Neill
For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It's not the most social pastime.
Audrey Hepburn
We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of life.
R.W. van Bemmelen
In darkness God's truth shines most clear.
Corrie ten Boom
As long as you remember that fighting evil doesn't necessarily make you good! Good and evil are each other's enemies, but they are often found close together.
Tonke Dragt
Your library is your paradise.
Erasmus
I found it idiotically distressing that a sharp finger whistle could no longer summon them outdoors into a playful twilight. An ancient discovery was now mine to make: to leave is to make nothing less than a mortal action. The suspicion came to me for the fist time that they were figures of my dreaming, like the loved dead: my mother and all these vanished boys. And after Mama's cremation I could not rid myself of the notion that she had been placed in the furnace of memory even when alive and, by extension, that one's dealings with others, ostensibly vital, at a certain point become dealings with the dead.
Joseph O'Neill
By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person.
Diet Eman
Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.
Vincent van Gogh
Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. "Corrie," he began gently, "when you and I go to Amsterdam-when do I give you your ticket?" I sniffed a few times, considering this. "Why, just before we get on the train." "Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we're going to need things, too. Don't run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need-just in time.
Corrie ten Boom
Life itself had become disembodied. My family, the spine of my days, had crumbled. I was lost in invertebrate time.
Joseph O'Neill
Although I'm only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite indepedent of anyone.
Anne Frank
Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.
Baruch Spinoza
I don't want to live in the kind of world where we don't look out for each other. Not just the people that are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand. I cant change the way anybody else thinks, or what they choose to do, but I can do my bit.
Charles de Lint
Worry is like racing the engine of an automobile without letting in the clutch.
Corrie ten Boom
We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.
Corrie ten Boom
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God.
Anne Frank
What does it mean to care? Let me start by saying that the word care has become a very ambivalent word. When someone says: 'I will take care of him!' it is more likely an announcement of an impending attack than of a tender compassion. And besides this ambivalence, the word is most often used in a negative way. 'Do you want coffee or tea?' 'I don't care.' 'Do you want to stay home or go to a movie?' 'I don't care.' 'Do you want to walk or go by car?' 'I don't care.' This expression of indifference toward choices in life has become commonplace. And often it seems that not to care has become more acceptable than to care, and a carefree life-style more attractive than a careful one.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
I always knew that words are suitcases with false bottoms.
Hans Keilson
When I try, I fail. When I trust, He succeeds.
Corrie ten Boom
There are no walls, no bolts, no locks that anyone can put on your mind.
Otto Frank
Ha dato tutto per scontato, ha dato per scontato che fossero solo parole dette a caso senza fare lo sforzo di ascoltare e capire. Le parole non sono solo lettere, le parole fanno male e rendono felici allo stesso tempo.
Sara Dardikh
The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.
Hendrik Willem van Loon
Everything I learned I learned from themovies.
Audrey Hepburn
God does not pay weekly but he pays at the end.
Dutch proverb
Magic is that paganistic reversal of the process of religion, in which man, instead of letting himself be used by God for the divine purpose, drags down his god to the level of a tool, which he uses for his own selfish purpose.
Geerhardus Vos
Who has the courage to set right those misperceptions that bring us love?
Joseph O'Neill
I dream my painting and I paint my dream.
Vincent van Gogh