On the contrary, beauty remains even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who's happy will make other happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery

Let the end come, even if it is hard, then at least we shall know whether we are finally going to win through or go under.

Thursday, 15 June, 1944

Sometimes I believe that God wants to try me, both now and later on; I must become good through my own efforts, without examples and without good advice. Then later on I shall be all the stronger. Who besides me will ever read these letters? From whom but myself shall I get comfort? As I need comforting often, I frequently feel weak and dissatisfied with myself; my shortcomings are too great. I know this, and every day I try to improve myself, again and again.

For a long time now I didn't know why I was bothering to do any schoolwork. The end of the war still seemed so far away, so unreal, like a fairy tale.

The Knock at the Door by Ina Boudier-Bakker.

Sometimes I think God is trying to test me, both now and in the future. I'll have to become a good person on my own, without anyone to serve as a model or advise me, but it'll make me stronger in the end.

begin with, will be used up too quickly and I won't have any left by the time the war is over. Yours

Believe me, if you've been shut up for a year and a half, it can get to be too much for you sometimes. But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.

Oh, when will we overcome all these difficulties? And yet it's good that we have to surmount them, since it makes the end that much more beautiful

I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.