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" The number of known human fossils only increases slowly. But the manner of regarding and assessing them is capable of progressing rapidly, as indeed it does. In the absence of any absolutely sensational discovery in prehistory, there is an up-to-date and scientific manner of understanding man, which is solidly based on palaeontology. "

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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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Difficulty

Upset

" From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Man

Science

Point Of View

" The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Product

Joint

Universe

" 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

" To be Catholic is the only way of being fully and utterly Christian. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Only

Being

Catholic

" Humanity at the centre of the primates, Homo sapiens, in humanity, is the end-product of a gradual work of creation, the successive sketches for which still surround us on every side. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Creation

Humanity

Side

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Humanity

Ancestors

Know

" 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

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

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Paris

Pull

Will

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Way

Strangers

" In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Good

Good People

Questions

" A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and 'superlive,' as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Power

Done

Evolution

" Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Old

Growing

Growing Old

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Thought

God

Action

" Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life - 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

Smile

Life

Grandfather

" 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

" Neither the Christian attitude of love for all mankind nor humane hopes for an organized society must cause us to forget that the 'human stratum' may not be homogeneous. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Society

Love

" 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

" 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

" The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Sun

Well

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Impossible

World

Problem

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

View

Way

God

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Love

Guidance

Surrender

" To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman? "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Always

Nature

Know

" 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

" 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

" I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it 'Le Milieu Divin,' but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Down

Spiritual

Long

" Deep down, there is in the substance of the cosmos a primordial disposition, sui generis, for self-arrangement and self-involution. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Down

Deep Down

Deep

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Spirit

Unity

Earth

" 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. "

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Alone

Christian

World