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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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Process
Force
Evolution
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" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
God
Earth
Religion
" 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
" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Words
Faith
History
" 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
" 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
" Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Evolution
Facts
Follow
" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Great
Universe
Nature
" I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Myself
Science
Look
" 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
" The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Others
Self
Most
" 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
" 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
" However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some 'Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.' "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Me
Go
Childhood
" 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
" 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
Us
Society
Love
" Death is acceptable only if it represents the physically necessary passage toward a union, the condition of a metamorphosis. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Union
Passage
Death
" 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
" 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
Me
" 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
" 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
Me
Sun
Well
" 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 world is round so that friendship may encircle it. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Friendship
World
Round
" 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
" To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Past
Backwards
Nature
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Universe
Touch
Loss
" 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
" 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
" Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. "
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Deepest
Way
Love