UN General Assembly
1961

Hammarskjold, who died at exactly the same age as Julius Caesar. I shall never forget how this Nordic son of other cultures and other ways of life—this son of his great country, Sweden, with its remarkable spiritual strength—had no difficulty at all, on his visit to Spain, in transcending the picturesque and the superficial in his comments and penetrating to the innermost spirituality of things and places. I remember accompanying him in Toledo, which has been the subject of so many brilliant literary descriptions but also of so many platitudes; and I was surprised at the unique understanding of what is pure, elegant and essential in this great historic city of Spain which was displayed throughout by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It was in Spain, again, in a memorable address, that he spoke of St. John of the Cross, and we shall always associate his memory with that invocation of the greatest of our mystics.