Let man live at a distance from God, and the universe remains neutral or hostile to him. But let man believe in God, and immediately all around him the elements, even the irksome, of the inevitable organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDINFor ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.
More Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes
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Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN -
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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The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, with creative goodness and creative power, will always remain one of the most disturbing mysteries of the universe for both our hearts and our minds.
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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.
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The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.
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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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Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society.
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Being happy is a matter of personal taste.
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At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first ‘feeling’ for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.
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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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It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.
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What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.
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From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.
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The only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil 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.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN