Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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 most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others.

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.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Being happy is a matter of personal taste.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.