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The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote emphasizes the dynamic nature of the mineral world, contrasting it with the ancient understanding of its static existence.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin highlights that the mineral world is not as rigid and unchanging as previously thought by ancient scientists. Instead, it undergoes constant transformation, akin to the changes seen in living organisms, suggesting a deeper complexity and mobility in geological processes that were not fully understood in the past.

Themes

MineralTransformationScienceChangeMobile

In practice

Example use cases

In a science class discussing geological processes, this quote can be introduced to explain the concept of mineral transformation.

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The whole life lies in the verb seeing.
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We may, perhaps, imagine that the creation was finished long ago. But that would be quite wrong. It continues still more magnificently, and at the highest levels of the world.
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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. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.
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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.
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All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances.
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