Dag Hammarskjöld Quotes

It makes one's heart ache when one sees that a man has staked his soul upon some end, the hopeless imperfection and futility of which is immediately obvious to everyone but himself. But isn't this, after all, merely a matter of degree? Isn't the pathetic grandeur of human existence in some way bound up with the eternal disproportion in this world, where self delusion is necessary to life, between the honesty of the striving and the nullity of the result? That we all — every one of us — take ourselves seriously is not merely ridiculous.

You are not the oil, you are not the air — merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born. You are merely 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.

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

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.

Perhaps a great love is never returned.

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.

He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn’t reserve a plot for weeds.

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

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

To love life and men as God loves them — for the sake of
their infinite possibilities, to wait like Him, to judge like Him, without passing judgment, to obey the order when it is given and never look back.

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

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

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.

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

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