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" The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Product
Joint
Universe
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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. 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Me
God
Action
" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Process
Force
Evolution
" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
God
Influence
Evil
" 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
" 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
" My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Paris
Pull
Will
" 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
" Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Theory
Evolution
True
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Man
Place
History
" 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
Me
Walk
I Am
" By the sole fact of his entering into 'Thought,' man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Experience
Unique
Thought
" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Laws
Born
Earth
" Regarded zoologically, man is today an almost isolated figure in nature. In his cradle, he was less isolated. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Almost
He
Isolated
" Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Individual
Leaves
Thought
" If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me - I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
End
Fear
Good
" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Paths
Man
Work
" Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by perpetual discovery. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Love
Like
Universe
" Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Matter
Organized
Universe
" The profoundly 'atomic' character of the universe is visible in everyday experience, in raindrops and grains of sand, in the hosts of the living, and the multitude of stars; even in the ashes of the dead. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Character
Universe
Stars
" 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
" We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Human
Spiritual
Having
" 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
" 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
" The earth's crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Feet
World
Mountain
" 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
" 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
" 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
" He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Believe
Head
Only