Quote

The myths have always condemned those who 'looked back.' Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.

Dag Hammarskjold

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Dag Hammarskjold
Age: 55 †
Born: 1905
Born: January 1
Died: 1961
Died: January 1
Diplomat
Economist
Poet
Politician
Writer
Jönköpings stad
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld
Back
Paradise
Always
Myth
Leaving
Shadow
Looked
Departure
Decision
Myths
Whatever
Condemned
May
Hence

More quotes by Dag Hammarskjold

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Fatigue dulls the pain, but awakes enticing thoughts of death. So! that is the way in which you are tempted to overcome your loneliness -- by making the ultimate escape from life. -- No! It may be that death is to be your ultimate gift to life: it must not be an act of treachery against it.
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Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions.
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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.
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Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.
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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.
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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.
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He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone. But loneliness can be a communion.
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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.
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We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
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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.
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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.
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We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.
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To reach perfection, we must all pass, one by one, through the death of self-effacement.
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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.
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If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.
Dag Hammarskjold
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The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body's total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form?
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'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.
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Humility before the flower at the timber line is the gate which gives access to the path up the open fell.
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Isn't the fulfillment of our duty towards our neighbor an expression of deepest desire?
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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