Dag Hammarskjold Quotes - Page 2

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Respect for the word - to employ it with scrupulous care and in 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.

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.

Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us.

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

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

Friendship needs no words.

The longest journey is the journey inward.

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

It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior that he became the tool of evil.

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?

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation.

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.

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.

In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment--the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth--until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.