I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDINReligion, born of the earth’s need for the disclosing of a god, is related to and co-extensive with not the individual man, but the whole of mankind.
More Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes
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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.
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For me, the Immaculate Conception is the feast of ‘passive action,’ the action that functions simply by the transmission through us of divine energy.
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The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one’s self to others.
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We shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
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There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me – I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.
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Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.
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The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.
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Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.
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If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions.
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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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At the extreme temperature occurring in the stars, matter can only survive in its most dissociated states. Only simple bodies exist on these incandescent stars.
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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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Mankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples.
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What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.
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The history of the kingdom of God is, directly, one of a reunion. The total divine milieu is formed by the incorporation of every elected spirit in Jesus Christ.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN