To forgive oneself? No, that doesn’t work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Forgiveness
Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
—Dag Hammarskjold
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Respectability, Spirituality, Respect
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Dignity
He broke fresh ground-because, and only because, he had the courage to go ahead without asking whether others were following or even understood. He had no need for the divided responsibility in which others seek to be safe from ridicule, because he had been granted a faith which required no confirmation-a contact with reality, light and intense like the touch of a loved hand: a union in self-surrender without self- destruction, where his heart was lucid and his mind was loving.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Solitude
The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents, which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: The Present
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Destiny, Decisions
If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Death, Dying
Never, “for the sake of peace and quiet,” deny your own experience and convictions.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Peace, Conviction
Only one feat is possible: not to have run away.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Courage
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: War
Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Reputation
In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Dying, Death
Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Perseverance, Achievement, Possibilities, Journeys
Life demands from you only the strength you posses. One one feat is possible—not to have run away.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Being True to Yourself
It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Praise
We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Serenity
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 its simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Wilderness
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Words
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 his right road.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Vision, Goals, Challenges, Aptness, Aspirations, Appropriateness
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Integrity
We cannot afford to forget any experience, not even the most painful.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Memory
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Loneliness
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Purpose
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible—not to have run away.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: God, Forgiveness, Work, Strength, Courage
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 this 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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Wilderness
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Dedication, Simplicity, Decisions, Commitment
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Peace
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
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- Henry Kissinger American Diplomat
- Martin Luther King, Jr. American Civil Rights Leader
- Jane Addams American Social Reformer
- Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
- Javier Perez de Cuellar Peruvian Diplomat, Politician
- Adlai Stevenson American Diplomat
- George F. Kennan American Diplomat, Historian
- John Foster Dulles American Politician
- Florence Nightingale English Nurse
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