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Better than other people.' Sometimes he says: 'That, at least, you are.' But more often: 'Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not - like other people.
Dag Hammarskjold -
It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty betrayals--though, God knows, they would give cause enough for anxiety and self-contempt--but the huge elementary mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is greater than I--in complacent adjustment to alien demands.
Dag Hammarskjold
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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.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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
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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 -
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 -
The devils enter uninvited when the house stands empty. For other kinds of guests, you have to first open the door.
Dag Hammarskjold -
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.
Dag Hammarskjold -
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.
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
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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 -
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.
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