Dag Hammarskjold Quotes & Sayings

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

You dare your Yes - and experience a meaning ... You repeat your Yes - and all things acquire a meaning ... When everything has a meaning, how can you live anything but a YES. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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*. — Dag Hammarskjold

A human intimacy
free from the earth but blessing the earth. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

Apes. The moon woke them
round the world's navel revolved
prayer wheels of steps. — Dag Hammarskjold

To preserve the silence within
amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens
no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

To the past: Thanks.
To the future: Yes. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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 — Dag Hammarskjold

We cannot afford to forget any experience, not even the most painful. — Dag Hammarskjold

Life only demands from you the strength you possess. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment. — Dag Hammarskjold

Destiny is something not to be desired and not to be avoided. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

You take the pen, and the lines dance. You take the flute and the notes shimmer. You take the brush, and the colors sing. So all things have meaning and beauty in that space beyond time where you are. How, then, can I hold back anything from you? — Dag Hammarskjold

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us. — Dag Hammarskjold

Friendship needs no words. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

On the bookshelf of life, God is a useful work of reference, always at hand but seldom consulted. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting - for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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? — Dag Hammarskjold

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

The devils enter uninvited when the house stands empty. For other kinds of guests, you have to first open the door. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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? — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

The UN wasn't created to take mankind into paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell. — Dag Hammarskjold

Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward - your destiny - are here and now. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy - from lack of character. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

Didst thou give me this inescapable loneliness so that it would be easier for me to give thee all? — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the Lover. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

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 — Dag Hammarskjold

The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. — Dag Hammarskjold

For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone. But loneliness can be a communion. — Dag Hammarskjold

For the sacrificed, in the hour of sacrifice, only one thing counts: faith-alone among enemies and skeptics. Faith, in spite of the humiliation which is both the necessary precondition and the consequence of faith, faith without any hope of compensation other than he can find in a faith which reality seems so thoroughly to refute. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

Perhaps a great love is never returned. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one's body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union, the body is confirmed in its pantheism. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

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.
— Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

Forgiving is forgetting, in spite of remembering. — Dag Hammarskjold

Life yields only to the conqueror. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

The light died in the low clouds. Falling snow drank in the dusk. Shrouded in silence, the branches wrapped me in their peace. When the boundaries were erased, once again the wonder: that *I* exist. — Dag Hammarskjold

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

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 ... — Dag Hammarskjold

Only one feat is possible: not to have run away. — Dag Hammarskjold

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. — Dag Hammarskjold

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