... there is no formula to teach us how to arrive at maturity ... Something ... has to be resolved between a man and himself ... but the results of the inner dialogue are evident to all, evident as independence, courage, and fairness in dealing with others ...
Maturity: among other things, a new lack of self-consciousness -- the kind you can only attain when you have become entirely indifferent to yourself through an absolute assent to your fate.
He who has placed himself in God's hands stands free vis-à-vis men: he is entirely at his ease with them, because he has granted them the right to judge.
We are not what we should be, we have not reached the full strength of our possible contribution, until we have managed to develop within ourselves, and in our relationships with others, the sense of belonging.
To be nothing in the self effacement of humility, yet, for the sake of the task, to embody its whole weight and importance in your bearing, as the one who has been called to undertake it. To give to people works, poetry, art, what the self can contribute, and to take, simply and freely, what belongs to it by reason of its identity ... Towards this, so help me, God.
-- Dag Hammarskjöld Markings
Translated by Leif Sjöberg and W.H. Auden
and Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, vols. II-V
Ed. Andrew W. Cordier and Wilder Foote
