62 quotes
It has been said that the United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.
In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us … Hence too the necessity of preparing for it.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
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.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
Your body must become familiar with its death — in all its possible forms and degrees — as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
In the faith which is "God's marriage to the soul", you are one in God, and God is wholly in you, just as, for you, He is wholly in all you meet. With this faith, in prayer you descend into yourself to meet the Other.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. It is when we all play safe that fatality will lead us to our doom. It is in the "dark shade of courage" alone that the spell can be broken.
The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.
To love life and men as God loves them — for the sake of their infinite possibilities,
to wait like Him,
to judge like Him,
without passing judgment,
to obey the order when it is given
and never look back —
Then He can use you — then, perhaps, He will use you.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
Give me a pure heart — that I may see Thee.
A humble heart — that I may hear Thee,
A heart of love — that I may serve Thee,
A heart of faith — that I may abide in Thee.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
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.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
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?
That piece of pagan anthropomorphism: the belief that, in order to educate us, God wishes us to suffer. How far from this is the assent to suffering when it strikes us because we have obeyed what we have seen to be God's will.
I never discuss discussions.
The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the UN and what it means clearly. Everything will be all right — you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves.
It is a little bit humiliating when I have to say that Chou En-lai to me appears as the most superior brain I have so far met in the field of foreign politics...[He is] so much more dangerous than you imagine because he is so much better a man than you have ever admitted.
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.
Vägmärken · Markings (1963)
The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
Misattributed
If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.
Attributed
It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.
Attributed
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
Attributed