Dag Hammarskjold

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

— 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

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

Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away.

— Dag Hammarskjold

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

— Dag Hammarskjold

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

— Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.

— Dag Hammarskjold

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

Fatigue dulls the pain, but awakes enticing thoughts of death. So! that is the way in which you are tempted to overcome your loneliness -- by making the ultimate escape from life. -- No! It may be that death is to be your ultimate gift to life: it must not be an act of treachery against it.

— Dag Hammarskjold

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

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.

— Dag Hammarskjold

Friendship needs no words...

— Dag Hammarskjold

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only those who keep their eye fixed on the far horizon will find their right road.

— Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

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

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.

— 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

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

— 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

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

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

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

— Dag Hammarskjold

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

— 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

It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

— Dag Hammarskjold

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

— Dag Hammarskjold

The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the U.N. and what it means clearly. 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

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