“Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.”

Death surrenders us totally to God: it makes us enter into him; we must, in return, surrender ourselves to death with absolute love and self-abandonment since.

The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, with creative goodness and creative power, will always remain one of the most disturbing mysteries of the universe for both our hearts and our minds.

If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions.

The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one’s self to others.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

The earth was probably born by accident; but, in accordance with one of the most general laws of evolution, scarcely had this accident happened than it was immediately made use of and recast into something naturally directed.

How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are forever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music.

I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.

The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.

However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some ‘Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.’

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

The paradoxical conciliation of the element with the whole, and of unity with multitude – all these are called Utopian, and yet they are biologically necessary.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‘renouncing’ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ in the usual meaning of the words.

O people of the Qur`an, the night has become long so you can pray (more) and the day has become short for you to fast.”

For any movement to gain momentum, it must start with a small action. This action becomes multiplied by the masses, and is made tangible when leadership changes course due to the weight of the movement’s voice.

Sometimes, you just have to let go… and embrace what you’ve become.

It’s not like the world is becoming hardcore, Richard Dawkins-atheist, but people are looking to sort of synthesize science – people love science, especially the millennials.

I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician.

To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.

I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.