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.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDINIn the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions.
More Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes
-
-
Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
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?
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
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.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Death is acceptable only if it represents the physically necessary passage toward a union, the condition of a metamorphosis.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
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 CHARDIN -
Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by perpetual discovery.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world… Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Long before the awakening of thought on earth, manifestations of cosmic energy must have been produced which have no parallel today.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Surely the wake left behind by mankind’s forward march reveals its movement just as clearly as the spray thrown up elsewhere by the prow.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN