Dag Hammarskjold Life Quotations

Smiling, sincere, incorruptible - His body disciplined and limber. A man who had become what he could, And was what he was- Ready at any moment to gather everything Into one simple sacrifice.

Life yields only to the conqueror.

Do not seek death. Death will find you,

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.

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

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

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.

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

You are 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.

Life demands from you only the strength you posses. One feat is possible -- not to have run away.

Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.