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 CHARDINIt cannot remain its own self except by identifying itself ever more intensely with the essence of the Cross.
More Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes
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My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.
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I came to China to follow my star and to steep myself in the raw regions of the universe.
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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.
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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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There is neither spirit nor matter in the world. The stuff of the universe is spirit-matter.
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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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No longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.
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Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.
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When death comes, all we can do is to surrender ourselves completely to the domination and guidance of God.
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One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.
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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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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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I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‘escape of energy,’ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.
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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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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