Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes And Sayings

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.

What Is Imponderable In The World Is Greater Than What We Can Handle.

The Facts Tell Us That No Religious Faith Releases - Or Ever Has Released At Any Moment In History - A Higher Degree Of Warmth, A More Intense Dynamism Of Unification Than The Christianity Of Our Own Day - And The More Catholic It Is, The Truer My Words.

One Mustn't Close One's Eyes To Difficulty And To Shortcomings; The More One Recognizes Them, The Less They Upset One.

When All Is Said And Done, What Constitutes The Impregnable Superiority Of Christianity Over All Other Types Of Faith Is That It Is Ever More Consciously Identified With A Christogenesis: In Other Words, With An Awareness Of The Rise Of A Certain Universal Presence Which Is At Once Immortalizing And Unifying.

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.

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.

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.

Love Is The Affinity Which Links And Draws Together The Elements Of The World... Love, In Fact, Is The Agent Of Universal Synthesis.

Death Surrenders Us Totally To God: It Makes Us Enter Into Him; We Must, In Return, Surrender Ourselves To Death With Absolute Love And Self-abandonment Since, When Death Comes, All We Can Do Is To Surrender Ourselves Completely To The Domination And Guidance Of God.

For Ideas To Prevail, Many Of Their Defenders Have To Die In Obscurity. Their Anonymous Influence Makes Itself Felt.

For Me, The Immaculate Conception Is The Feast Of 'Passive Action,' The Action That Functions Simply By The Transmission Through Us Of Divine Energy. Purity, In Spite Of Outward Appearances, Is Essentially An Active Virtue, Because It Concentrates God In Us And On Those Who Are Subject To Our Influence.

It Seems To Me That Terrestrial Beings, As They Become More Autonomous, Psychologically Richer, Shut Themselves Up In A Way Against One Another, And At The Same Time Gradually Become Strangers To The Cosmic Environment And Currents, Impenetrable To One Another, And Incapable Of Exteriorizing Themselves.

For Me, The Real Earth Is That Chosen Part Of The Universe, Still Almost Universally Dispersed And In Course Of Gradual Segregation, But Which Is Little By Little Taking On Body And Form In Christ.

In A Way, The Whole Tangible Universe Itself Is A Vast Residue, A Skeleton Of Countless Lives That Have Germinated In It And Have Left It, Leaving Behind Them Only A Trifling, Infinitesimal Part Of Their Riches.

Man Is Unable To See Himself Entirely Unrelated To Mankind, Neither Is He Able To See Mankind Unrelated To Life, Nor Life Unrelated To The Universe.

It Is Our Duty As Men And Women To Proceed As Though The Limits Of Our Abilities Do Not Exist.

Man The Individual Consoles Himself For His Passing With The Thought Of The Offspring Or The Works Which He Leaves Behind.

We Must Accept What Science Tells Us, That Man Was Born From The Earth. But, More Logical Than The Scientists Who Lecture Us, We Must Carry This Lesson To Its Conclusion: That Is To Say, Accept That Man Was Born Entirely From The World - Not Only His Flesh And Bones But His Incredible Power Of Thought.

Religion And Science Are The Two Conjugated Faces Or Phases Of One And The Same Complete Act Of Knowledge - The Only One Which Can Embrace The Past And Future Of Evolution And So Contemplate, Measure And Fulfil Them.

The Hindu Religions Gave Me The Impression Of A Vast Well Into Which One Plunges In Order To Grasp The Reflection Of The Sun.

The Incomparable Greatness Of The Religions Of The East Lies In Their Having Been Second To None In Vibrating With The Passion For Unity. 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.

For 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.

Morality Arose Largely As An Empirical Defence Of The Individual And Society. 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.

I Give The Name Of Cosmic Sense To The More Or Less Confused Affinity That Binds Us Psychologically To The All Which Envelops Us. The Existence Of This Feeling Is Indubitable, And Apparently As Old As The Beginning Of Thought... The Cosmic Sense Must Have Been Born As Soon As Man Found Himself Facing The Forest, The Sea And The Stars.

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.

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.

We Often Represent God To Ourselves As Being Able To Draw From Non-being A World Without Sorrows, Faults, Dangers - A World In Which There Is No Damage, No Breakage. This Is A Conceptual Fantasy And Makes It Impossible To Solve The Problem Of Evil.

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 Homogeneous Representation Of The Universe. We Know The History Of His Bones, But No Ordered Place Has Yet Been Found In Nature For His Reflective Intelligence.

We Are Not Human Beings Having A Spiritual Experience. We Are Spiritual Beings Having A Human Experience.

To Be Catholic Is The Only Way Of Being Fully And Utterly Christian.

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.

Religion, 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.

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.

By Its Birth, And For All Time, Christianity Is Pledged To The Cross And Dominated By The Sign Of The Cross. It Cannot Remain Its Own Self Except By Identifying Itself Ever More Intensely With The Essence Of The Cross.

In Each Soul, God Loves And Partly Saves The Whole World Which That Soul Sums Up In An Incommunicable And Particular Way.

Christ Has Conquered Death, Not Only By Suppressing Its Evil Effects, But By Reversing Its Sting. By Virtue Of Christ's Rising Again, Nothing Any Longer Kills Inevitably, But Everything Is Capable Of Becoming The Blessed Touch Of The Divine Hands, The Blessed Influence Of The Will Of God Upon Our Lives.

The More Nobly A Man Wills And Acts, The More Avid He Becomes For Great And Sublime Aims To Pursue. He Will No Longer Be Content With Family, Country, And The Remunerative Aspect Of His Work. He Will Want Wider Organisations To Create, New Paths To Blaze, Causes To Uphold, Truths To Discover, An Ideal To Cherish And Defend.

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.

The Church Is Like A Great Tree Whose Roots Must Be Energetically Anchored In The Earth While Its Leaves Are Serenely Exposed To The Bright Sunlight. In This Way, She Sums Up A Whole Gamut Of Beats In A Single Living And All-embracing Act, Each One Of Which Corresponds To A Particular Degree Or A Possible Form Of Spiritualisation.

Love Is A Sacred Reserve Of Energy; It Is Like The Blood Of Spiritual Evolution.

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.

Through Fidelity, We Situate Ourselves And Maintain Ourselves In The Hands Of God So Exactly As To Become One With Them In Their Action.

The Pagan Loves The Earth In Order To Enjoy It And Confine Himself Within It; The Christian In Order To Make It Purer And Draw From It The Strength To Escape From It.

In The Divine Milieu, All The Elements Of The Universe Touch Each Other By That Which Is Most Inward And Ultimate In Them. There They Concentrate, Little By Little, All That Is Purest And Most Attractive In Them Without Loss And Without Danger Of Subsequent Corruption.

What I Cry Out For, Like Every Being, With My Whole Life And All My Earthly Passion, Is Something Very Different From An Equal To Cherish: It Is A God To Adore.

Love In All Its Subtleties Is Nothing More, And Nothing Less, Than The More Or Less Direct Trace Marked On The Heart Of The Element By The Psychical Convergence Of The Universe Upon Itself.

Mankind, The Spirit Of The Earth, The Synthesis Of Individuals And Peoples, 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.

To Discover And Know Has Always Been A Deep Tendency Of Our Nature. Can We Not Recognize It Already In Caveman?

A Sense Of The Universe, A Sense Of The All, The Nostalgia Which Seizes Us When Confronted By Nature, Beauty, Music - These Seem To Be An Expectation And Awareness Of A Great Presence.