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.
The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.
I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of 'escape of energy,' that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.
The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others.
Deep down, there is in the substance of the cosmos a primordial disposition, sui generis, for self-arrangement and self-involution.
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.
Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.
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.
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.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time.
In each soul, God loves and partly saves the whole world which that soul sums up in an incommunicable and particular way.
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.
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.
At the heart of every being lies creation's dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.
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.
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.
My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.
Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them... for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.
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.
He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.
Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.
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.
Long before the awakening of thought on earth, manifestations of cosmic energy must have been produced which have no parallel today.
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.
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.
It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.
To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?
I came to China to follow my star and to steep myself in the raw regions of the universe.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To be Catholic is the only way of being fully and utterly Christian.
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.
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.
It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway.
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.
Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in 'renouncing' one's own self, by which I mean making up one's mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being 'happy' or 'unhappy' in the usual meaning of the words.
