Dag Hammarskjöld

“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.”

“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.”

“Trees quiver in the wind,sailing on a sea of mistout of earshot.”

“יש נקודה שבה הכול הופך לפשוט וכבר אין שאלה של בחירה, כי כל מה שהשקעת יאבד אם תסתכל אחורה. נקודת האל־חזור של החיים.”

“אלה שמשתמשים בהיסטוריה בהחלט יישמעו על ידי ההיסטוריה, ויצטרכו לקבל את גזר דינה.”

“סוג הכבוד היחיד שהוא אמיתי הוא הכבוד שלא נפגם על ידי אדישותם של אחרים.”

“העמדה שלך לעולם לא נותנת לך את הזכות לפקד. זה רק מטיל עליך את החובה לחיות כך את חייך שאחרים יוכלו לקבל את הפקודות שלך מבלי להיות מושפלים.”

“לעולם אל תסתכל למטה כדי לבדוק את הקרקע לפני שתעשה את הצעד הבא שלך; רק מי שישמור את עיניו על האופק הרחוק יימצא את הדרך הנכונה.”

“לעולם אל תחשב את גובה ההר לפני שהגעת לפסגה. רק אז תבין כמה זה היה קצר.”

“אל תפחד מעצמך, אלא חייה את האינדיבידואליות שלך במלואה, לתמיד.”

“המסע הארוך ביותר הוא המסע הפנימי.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“The dizziness in the face of les espaces infinis--only overcome if we dare to gaze into them without any protection. And accept them as the reality before which we must justify our existence. For this is the truth we must reach to live, that everything is and we just in it.”

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

“Doffing the ego'ssafe glory, he findshis naked reality.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”