To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDINMan can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem.
More Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes
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In the divine milieu, all the elements of the universe touch each other by that which is most inward and ultimate in them.
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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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Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
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I would like to express the thoughts of a man who, having finally penetrated the partitions and ceilings of little countries, little coteries, little sects, rises above all these categories and finds himself a child and citizen of the Earth.
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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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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.
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Through fidelity, we situate ourselves and maintain ourselves in the hands of God so exactly as to become one with them in their action.
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Truly, there is a Christian note which makes the whole World vibrate, like an immense gong, in the divine Christ. This note is unique and universal, and in it alone consists the Gospel.
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It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a . We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.
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At the heart of every being lies creation’s dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.
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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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All I know is that, thanks to a sort of habit which has always been ingrained in me, I have never, at any moment of my life, experienced the least difficulty in addressing myself to God as to a supreme Someone.
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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.
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The earth’s crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches.
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But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary.
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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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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.
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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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He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.
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There is neither spirit nor matter in the world. The stuff of the universe is spirit-matter.
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By its birth, and for all time, Christianity is pledged to the Cross and dominated by the sign of the Cross.
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We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power..
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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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So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.
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I am not enough of a mathematician to be able to judge either the well-foundedness or the limits of relativity in physics.
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If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN