The whole life lies in the verb seeing.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
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.
Interpretation
Each person's ideal way of living is shaped by their individual tastes and life circumstances.
In this quote, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin emphasizes that there is no singularly correct way to live one's life. Instead, he suggests that the sanctity of one's life choices emerges from how they align with natural inclinations and the contextual pressures faced in life. It conveys the idea that personal growth and fulfillment can come in manifold forms, shaped uniquely for each individual by divine guidance and situational influences.
In practice
In a speech about personal journeys and life choices, this quote can highlight the importance of following one's unique path.
The whole life lies in the verb seeing.
Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge - the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
the more i live, the more i realize what strange creatures human beings are. some of them might just as well have a hundred legs, like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. the human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow-man seem actually non-existent. one doubts if they exist to any startling degree even in oneself.
There is more evil in the least sin than in the greatest affliction.
Travel, I was coming to realize, was a metaphor not only for the countless options life offers but also for the fact that choosing one option reduces you to the parameters of that choice. Thus, in knowing my possibilities, I also knew my limitations.
Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
There is nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well.
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