Dag Hammarskjöld

“Somebody placed the shuttle in your hand: somebody who had already arranged the threads.”

“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?”

“A human intimacy--free from the earth but blessing the earth.”

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

“We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny, but what we put into it is ours.”

“Att aldrig låta framgången dölja sin tomhet, insatsen sin intighet, arbetslivet sin ödslighet, och så att bevara sporren att nå vidare – den smärta i själen som driver oss själva. Se dig inte om. Och dröm ej om framtiden: den skall ej återskänka dig det förgångna eller tillfredsställa andra lyckodrömmar. Din plikt och din belöning – ditt öde – är HÄR och NU.”

“Mitte kunagi lubada edul varjata enda tühisust, panusel enda tähtsusetust, tööelul oma kõledust, et säiliks edasipürgimise ajend - see hingevalu, mis meid tagant kihutab. Ära vaata tagasi. Ära unista tulevikust: ta ei tagasta sulle möödanikku ega rahulda teisi õnneunelmaid. Sinu kohustus ja su tasu - su saatus - on SIIN ja PRAEGU.”

“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.”

“Too tired for company,You seek a solitudeYou are too tired to fill.”

“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?”

“Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.”

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

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

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

“Friendship needs no words.”

“The longest journeyIs the journey inwards.Of him who has chosen his destiny,Who has started upon his questFor the source of his being." page 58The 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”

“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.”

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

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

“The longest journey is the journey inward.”

“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.”

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

“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”

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

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

“Didst thou give me this inescapable loneliness so that it would be easier for me to give thee all?”

“Meine Mittelmäßigkeit erkennen, nicht in geißelnder Selbstverachtung, nicht im Bekennerhochmut, sondern als Gefahr für die Integrität des Handels, wenn ich sie aus den Augen lasse.”

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

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

“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. ”

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

“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. ”

“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. ”

“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.”

“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...”

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

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

“Life only demands from you the strength you possess.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“No cracking of the whip of wordsdisturbed his peacein a space that sung.”

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