Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDINMankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples.
More Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes
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Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem.
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Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.
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This note, which is essential to every form of mysticism, has even penetrated them so deeply that we find ourselves falling under a spell simply by uttering the names of their Gods.
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I don’t mean the ironic and disillusioned smile of my grandfather, but the triumphant smile of the person who knows that he will survive, or that at least he will be saved by what seems to be destroying him.
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Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.
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We have but one permanent home: heaven – that’s still the old truth that we always have to re-learn – and it’s only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.
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How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?
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Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or worth worrying about if they evade one or are slow in coming. All that is really worth while is action – faithful action, for the world, and in God.
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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.
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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.
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To say that Christ is the term and motive force of evolution, to say that he manifests himself as ‘evolver,’ is implicitly to recognize that he becomes attainable in and through the whole process of evolution.
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He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.
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The soft climate and luxuriance of the tropics; the greenness, the fragrance, the flowers – extraordinary flowers covering the tallest trees and turning them into huge bouquets.
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For ideas to prevail, many of their defenders have to die in obscurity. Their anonymous influence makes itself felt.
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What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN