Dag Hammarskjöld Quotes

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.

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.

Give me a pure heart that I may see Thee. A humble heart that I may hear Thee, A heart of love that I may serve Thee, A heart of faith that I may abide in Thee.

In the faith which is "God's marriage to the soul", you are one in God, and God is wholly in you, just as, for you, He is wholly in all you meet. With this faith, in prayer you descend into yourself to meet the other.

Humility before the flower at the timber line is the gate which gives access to the path up the open fell.

A heart pulsating in harmony with the circulation of sap and the flow of rivers? A body with the rhythms of the earth in its movements? No. Instead: a mind, shut off from the oxygen of alert senses, that has wasted itself on 'treasons, stratagems and spoils' — of importance only within four walls. A tame animal — in whom the strength of the species has outspent itself, to no purpose.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Strait Road — to live for others in order to save one's soul. The Broad — to live for others in order to save one's self-esteem.

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.

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.