Quotes from Dag Hammarskjold

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 his right road.

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

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

Life only demands from the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away.

Only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied? You are the one who must grow up.

The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents, which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy - from lack of character.

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.

A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility.

It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

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

Life only demands from you the strength you possess.

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

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler — quieter, warmer.

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.

Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible not to run away.

'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

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.

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

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

The longest journeyIs the journey inwardsOf him who has chosen his destiny.

I am the vessel. The draft is God's. And God is the thirsty one.