195 Quotes by Dag Hammarskjöld

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

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.

Perhaps a great love is never returned. Had it been given warmth and shelter by its counterpart in the Other, perhaps it would have been hindered from ever growing to maturity. It “gives” us nothing. But in its world of loneliness it leads us up to the summits with wide vistas – of great insights.

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.

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.

When the morning’s freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish it is then that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.

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.

Do not look back and do not dream about the future. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward, your destiny, is in the present moment.

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