Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. 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. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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

Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things...as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Everywhere on Earth, at this moment, in the new spiritual atmosphere created by the appearance of the idea of evolution, there float, in a state of extreme mutual sensitivity, love of God and faith in the world: the two essential components of the Ultra-human.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

(Evolution) 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. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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

God is not remote from us. He is at the point of my pen, my (pick) shovel, my paint brush, my (sewing) needle - and my heart and thoughts.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship, it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin