Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I greatly enjoyed the Hawaiian Islands. They are a real little paradise in spite of the influx of Americans who have made it one of their most pleasant 'centers of resort': 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. "

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Greatness

Passion

Unity

" Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Matter

Organized

Universe

" We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Forever

You

Will

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Time

Own

" There is neither spirit nor matter in the world. The stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could have produced the human molecule. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Matter

Universe

World

" My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Paris

Pull

Will

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Thoughts

Man

Earth

" Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil, relieved of a large part of his work and compelled to an ever-increasing speed of action by the devices which his intelligence cannot help ceaselessly creating and perfecting, man is about to find himself abruptly plunged into idleness. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Intelligence

Help

Work

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Done

Words

Said

" 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

Myself

Turn

" 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

React

Happy

Be Happy

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Day

World

Impossible

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Universe

Earth

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Know

Transformation

World

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Thought

Sea

Man

" We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Power

Passion

Waiting

" Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Doubt

Man

Everyone

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Passion

Cry

Cherish

" The quantity and quality of consciousness, one may say, have always been growing throughout geological times. In this respect man, in whom nervous organisation and therefore psychological powers have attained an undisputed maximum, may be considered, scientifically, as a natural centre of evolution of the primates. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Man

Say

Respect

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

See

Life

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Man

Thought

World

" What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Than

Greater

Handle

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Tree

Great

She

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Skeleton

Way

Universe

" 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

Think

Man

Limits

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Sad

Truth

Always

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Society

Intelligent

Need

" It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Going

Matter

Warm

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Walk

I Am