The whole life lies in the verb seeing.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True peace comes from letting go of the need for happiness and unhappiness.
In this quote, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin suggests that true repose, or peace of mind, is attained not through the pursuit of happiness or the avoidance of unhappiness, but through a deep understanding of oneself and the world. He emphasizes the importance of renouncing the ego's desire for emotional highs and lows, advocating instead for a more detached, philosophical approach to life that transcends conventional judgments about happiness.
Themes
ReposeRenounceSelfHappinessUnhappinessPeace
In practice
Example use cases
In a thoughtful speech about finding peace in life's challenges, one might use this quote to illustrate the depth of inner tranquility.
More from Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
All quotes →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.
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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.
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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.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
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.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
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Where the apple reddens never pry - lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.
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The State is concentric, but the individual is eccentric.
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