Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Violence
Meaningfulness
Small
Paradox
Whether
Scale
Death
Scales
Acts
Bitter
Killing
Large

More quotes by Dag Hammarskjold

Image
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.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
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.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
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.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
The longest journey is the journey inward.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
Here man is no longer the center of the world, only a witness, but a witness who is also a partner in the silent life of Nature, bound by secret affinities of the trees.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
To preserve the silence within--amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens--no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
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
Image
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.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
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
Image
At some moment I did answer Yes to someone or something. And from that hour on I was certain that existence is meaningful.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
Life yields only to the conqueror.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.
Dag Hammarskjold
Image
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
Image
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
Image
On the bookshelf of life, God is a useful work of reference, always at hand but seldom consulted.
Dag Hammarskjold