Dag Hammarskjold Quotes

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

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

Beneath the hush a whisper from long ago, promising peace of mind and a burden shared.
No peace which is not peace for all, no rest until all has been fulfilled.

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.

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

Each day the first day:
Each day a life.

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

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.

My home drove me
into the wilderness.
Few look for me. Few hear me.

When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish it is then that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.

You have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is still possible that you have something to contribute.

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

No cracking of the whip of words
disturbed his peace
in a space that sung.

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.

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

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.

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

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

It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection. It is all the others. In this sense, the Organization is first of all their Organization and I deeply believe in the wisdom with which they will be able to use it and guide it. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the Organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so.

At some moment I did answer "Yes" to someone or something. And from that hour on I was certain that existence is meaningful.

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.

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.

Life only demands from you the strength you possess.

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.

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.

Too tired for company,
You seek a solitude
You are too tired to fill.

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.

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

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.

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

Perhaps a great love is never returned.

It is not we who seek the Way, but the Way which seeks us. That is why you are faithful to it, even while you stand waiting, so long as you are prepared, and act the moment you are confronted by its demands.

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

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.

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?

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

Jesus' 'lack of moral principles.' He sat at meat with publicans and sinners, he consorted with harlots. Did he do this to obtain their votes? Or did he think that, perhaps, he could convert them by such 'appeasement'? Or was his humanity rich and deep enough to make contact, even in them, with that in human nature which is common to all men, indestructible, and upon which the future is built?

Friendship needs no words.

To the past: Thanks.
To the future: Yes.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

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.

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.

His moral lecture
blazed with hate.
What could have driven a child that far?

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

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.

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.
To be nothing in the self-effacement of humility, yet, for the sake of the task, to embody its whole weight and importance in your earing, as the one who has been called to undertake it. To give to people, works, poetry, art, what the self can contribute, and to take, simply and freely, what belongs to it by reason of its identity. Praise and blame, the winds of success and adversity, blow over such a life without leaving a trace or upsetting its balance.

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.

You are your own god – and are surprised when you find that the wolf pack is hunting you across the desolate ice fields of winter.

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

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

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.

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

That our pains and longings are thousandfold and can be anesthetized in a thousand different ways is as commonplace a truth as that, in the end, they are all one, and can only be overcome in one way. What you most need is to feel ...

Smiling, sincere, incorruptible -
His body disciplined and limber.
A man who had become what he could,
And was what he was-
Ready at any moment to gather everything
Into one simple sacrifice.

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

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

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.

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.

A human intimacy
free from the earth but blessing the earth.

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

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

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

He stood erect - as a peg-top does as long as the whip keeps lashing it. He was modest - thanks to a robust conviction of his own superiority. He was unambitious - all he wanted was a life free from cares and he took more pleasure in the failures of others than in his own successes. He saved his life by never risking it - and complained that he was misunderstood.

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

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

The 'mystical experience'. Always here and now - in that freedom which is one with distance in that stillness which is born of silence. But - this is a freedom in the midst of action, a stillness in the midst of other human beings. The mystery is a constant reality to him who, in this world, is free from self-concern, a reality that grows peaceful and mature before the receptive attention of assent.

To be free, to rise and leave everything, without a glance back, behind. To say "yes".

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.

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.

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

At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose *your* self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in one of them is there a congruence of the elector and the elected. Only one
which you will never find until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy, out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of the mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your *I*.

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.

For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.

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

I never discuss discussions.

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.

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.

Is my contact with others anything more than a contact with reflections? Who or what can give me the power to transform the mirror into a doorway?

It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty betrayals
though, God knows, they would give cause enough for anxiety and self-contempt
but the huge elementary mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is greater than I
in complacent adjustment to alien demands.

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