Dag Hammarskjold Quotes

Life is short, and therefore, one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal, and give up the whole life to it. For what is the value of life, this vegetating little low life of man? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.

I have a rendezvous with life.

Why should I ask the wise men: Whence is my beginning? I am busy with the thought: Where will be my end?

When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You've asked them, I've asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. 'How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?'

You want to live-but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying-and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?

Everybody dies but not everybody lives.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

People living deeply have no fear of death.

All my life, I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.

It is not dying, but living, that is a preparation for Death.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that's worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn't even come close to answering the question. "What do you do?".

Living is having and following a purpose. That's all.

Life is not measured by the time we live.

The one true freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early as possible, for death is an event that embraces all our lives. And the only way to have a good death is to lead a good life. The more we do God's will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die.

The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but a life without a purpose.

We live under the sun, but our destiny is beyond its rising and setting.

I'm not sure yet what my higher mission is, but I have a feeling it might be great. Before, I thought my mission was death, but now my mission is life.

I carry on singing because I love it. The closer you are to the end, the more you understand how important it is.

The modern meaning of life's end-when does it end? How does it end? How should it end? What is the value of life? How do we measure it?

There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.

I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life.