Dag Hammarskjold quotes:

The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body's total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form?

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.

The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.

Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.

I am the vessel. The draft is God's. And God is the thirsty one.

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.

Everything will be all right - you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves.

What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.

Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.

There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return.

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

Maturity - among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play, who takes it for granted that he is at one with his play-mates.

The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest for the source of his being.

Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away.

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation.

Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.

Your body must become familiar with its death - in all its possible forms and degrees - as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one's body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union, the body is confirmed in its pantheism.

In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment--the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth--until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

Trees quiver in the wind,sailing on a sea of mistout of earshot.

Like the bee, we distill poison from honey for our self-defense--what happens to the bee if it uses its sting is well known.

Destiny is something not be to desired and not to be avoided. a mystery not contrary to reason, for it implies that the world, and the course of human history, have meaning.

Acts of violence-- Whether on a large or a small scale, the bitter paradox: the meaningfulness of death--and the meaninglessness of killing.

This accidentalmeeting of possibilitiescalls itself I.I ask: what am I doing here?And, at once, this Ibecomes unreal.

The dizziness in the face of les espaces infinis--only overcome if we dare to gaze into them without any protection. And accept them as the reality before which we must justify our existence. For this is the truth we must reach to live, that everything is and we just in it.

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It is ? is nothing, yet at the same time one with everything. It is in this sense that humility is absolute self-effacement.

Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.

A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility.

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.

We've got to learn hard things in our lifetime, but it's love that gives you the strength. It's being nice to people and having a lot of fun and laughing harder than anything, hopefully every single day of your life.

On the bookshelf of life, God is a useful work of reference, always at hand but seldom consulted.

Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who 'forgives' you--out of love--takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice. The price you must pay for your own liberation through another's sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself.

Here man is no longer the center of the world, only a witness, but a witness who is also a partner in the silent life of Nature, bound by secret affinities of the trees.

Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back. It must be held out empty - for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity.

Life yields only to the conqueror.

Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions.

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.

I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.

The myths have always condemned those who 'looked back.' Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.

Fatigue dulls the pain, but awakes enticing thoughts of death. So! that is the way in which you are tempted to overcome your loneliness -- by making the ultimate escape from life. -- No! It may be that death is to be your ultimate gift to life: it must not be an act of treachery against it.

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting - for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day.

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.

The light died in the low clouds. Falling snow drank in the dusk. Shrouded in silence, the branches wrapped me in their peace. When the boundaries were erased, once again the wonder: that *I* exist.

The longest journey is the journey inward.

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy - from lack of character.

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.

Peacekeeping is not a job for soldiers, but only soldiers can do it.

Only one feat is possible: not to have run away.

The big, shoe-thumping fellow continues as a dark thunderhead to threaten all unrepentant non-Communists with hail and thunder

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone. But loneliness can be a communion.

If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.

The world cannot live at peace without the United Nations. For this reason: it creates a reasonable guarantee that all this change in the world, these tremendous political and economic developments, can be channelized, kept orderly. The United Nations is a mold that keeps the hot metal from spilling over.

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer.

The big, shoe-thumping fellow continues as a dark thunderhead to threaten all unrepentant non-Communists with hail and thunder.

To reach perfection, we must all pass, one by one, through the death of self-effacement.

When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish it is then that you must not hesitate.

Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.

Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.

It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.

I never discuss discussions.

The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.

It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

For all that has been, Thank you. For all that is to come, Yes!

You are the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency, your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end, and remain purely as a means.

Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice , we must be just.

To have humility is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves. Then, how much disappears, and all that remains falls into place. In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.

I don't know Who, or what, put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone, or Something,and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

For all that has been, Thanks. To all that shall be, Yes.

'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

Be grateful as your deeds become less and less associated with your name, as your feet ever more lightly tread the earth.

Do not look back and do not dream about the future. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward, your destiny, is in the present moment

Forgiving is forgetting, in spite of remembering.

Friendship needs no words.

We cannot afford to forget any experience, not even the most painful.

It is more important to understand the ground of your own behavior than to understand the motives of another.

What you must dare: is to be yourself.

It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior that he became the tool of evil.

The longest journey Is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest For the source of his being." page 58 The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents, contents which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them." page 62

Time goes by: reputation increases, ability declines.

In the presence of God, nothing stands between Him and us - we are forgiven. But we cannot feel His presence if anything is allowed to stand between ourselves and others.

Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each of us.

The UN wasn't created to take mankind into paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell.

Better than other people.' Sometimes he says: 'That, at least, you are.' But more often: 'Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not - like other people.

Setbacks in trying to realize the ideal do not prove that the ideal is at fault.

We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.

Do not seek death. Death will find you,

The 'great' commitment is so much easier than the ordinary everyday one.

Perhaps a great love is never returned.

Respect for the word - to employ it with scrupulous care and an incorruptible heartfelt love of truth - is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution.

The concept of loyalty is distorted when it is understood to mean blind acceptance. It is correctly interpreted when it is assumed to cover honest criticism.

The Universal Declaration... as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...it not only crystallizes the political thought of our times on these matters, but it has also influenced the thinking of legislators all over the world.

So rests the sky against the earth. The dark still tarn in the lap of the forest. As a husband embraces his wife's body in faithful tenderness, so the bare ground and trees are embraced by the still, high, light of the morning. I feel an ache of longing to share in this embrace, to be united and absorbed. A longing like carnal desire, but directed towards earth, water, sky, and returned by the whispers of the trees, the fragrance of the soil, the caresses of the wind, the embrace of water and light. Content? No, no, no - but refreshed, rested - while waiting.

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds

To preserve the silence within--amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens--no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.

You wake from dreams of doom and--for a moment--you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love's calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.

Doffing the ego's safe glory, he finds his naked reality.

Like wind-- In it, with it, of it. Of it just like a sail, so light and strong that, even when it is bent flat, it gathers all the power of the wind without hampering its course. Like light-- In light, lit through by light, transformed into light. Like the lens which disappears in the light it focuses. Like wind. Like light. Just this--on these expanses, on these heights.

When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the Lover.

Perhaps a great love is never returned. Had it been given warmth and shelter by its counterpart in the Other, perhaps it would have been hindered from ever growing to maturity. It "gives" us nothing. But in its world of loneliness it leads us up to the summits with wide vistas - of great insights.

Isn't the fulfillment of our duty towards our neighbor an expression of deepest desire?

In a political context of the utmost significance, ["freedom from fear"] recognizes a human right which, in a broad sense, may be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

The truth is so simple that it is regarded as a pretentious banality.

The devils enter uninvited when the house stands empty. For other kinds of guests, you have to first open the door.

It is a little bit humiliating when I have to say that Chou En-lai to me appears as the most superior brain I have so far met in the field of foreign politics... so much more dangerous than you imagine because he is so much better a man than you have ever admitted.

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source.

Unless there is a spiritual renaissance, the world will know no peace.

The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.

Each day the first day: Each day a life.

You dare your Yes - and experience a meaning...You repeat your Yes - and all things acquire a meaning...When everything has a meaning, how can you live anything but a YES.

Destiny is something not to be desired and not to be avoided.