Dag Hammarskjold Quotes

If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.

There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return.

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

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.

Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

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

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.

Doffing the ego's safe glory, he finds his naked reality.

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.

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

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*.

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

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

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.

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

We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.

Do not seek death. Death will find you.

It is not we who seek the Way, but the Way which seeks us. That is why you are faithful to it, even while you stand waiting, so long as you are prepared, and act the moment you are confronted by its demands.

The concept of loyalty is distorted when it is understood to mean blind acceptance. It is correctly interpreted when it is assumed to cover honest criticism.

If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. They will make note of this and not remain in your debt long.