Henri de Lubac

“So he [Fernand Guimet] questioned that impoverished faith, which becomes mere religious sentiment, or an impulse without form, or even simple communitarian warmth, or, worse yet, slogans for action.”

“Bergson said that the universe is "a machine to make gods". Teilhard would not take up the expression as his own: in his eyes, the universe is merely a machine to make persons.”

“The faithful soul is always an open soul.”

“For a spiritual and metaphysical crisis, only a remedy of the same nature is appropriate.”

“There is an easily observable contrast in many men between their secular knowledge and their religious instruction; the former is that of a grown man, who has studied for a long time, who has specialized in some professional skill, who knows life, who is cultivated; the second has remained that of a child, wholly elementary, rudimentary, a mixture of childish imagination, poorly assimilated abstract notions, scraps of vague and disconnected teachings gathered by chance from existence. The disproportion is such that it often ends in an abandonment of faith.”

“A […] form of present-day secularism is activism, which discounts contemplation and all interiority.”

“Pierre Teilhard was a consistent personalist. In his youth he may well have experienced the 'fascination of the impersonal and generalized' and confused them with the universal; but as soon as he began to develop his thought, he made a complete change of direction.”

“[S]ince being is analogical, we are quite correct in using the same words, in particular the word 'being', for both God and his creatures.”

“There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

“Nothing is more ingenious, more obstinate, nastier—indeed, in a sense, more clear sighted, than mediocrity harrying every form of superiority that offends it.”

“To seek sincerity above all things is perhaps, at bottom, not to want to be transformed; it is to cling to yourself, to have a morbid love of yourself, just as you are, that is to say, false. It is to refuse release.”

“The denser the ignorance, the more enlightened it thinks itself to be.”

“The most unbending thoughts are the most vulnerable to change.”

“Everybody has his filter, which he takes about with him, though which, from the indefinite mass of facts, he gathers in those suited to confirm his prejudices. And the same fact again, passing through different filters, is revealed in different aspects, so as to confirm the most diverse opinions.{{pbr}}Rare, very rare are those who check their filter.”

“The fear of falling a prey to error must never prevent us from getting to the full truth. To overstep the limit, to go beyond, would be to err through excessive daring; but there are also errors of timidity which consist precisely in stopping short, never daring to go any further than half-truths.{{pbr}}Love of truth never goes without daring. And that is one of the reasons why truth is not loved.”

“Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.”

“The contact of a believer with a nonbeliever must take the form of a dialogue. The all-powerful action of pure sanctity alone is dispensed from it, since it is not bound by any law. But the dialogue will never get underway if it is not first a dialogue with myself.”

“We must come to see that God is not so much the cause of moral obligation or the sanction of duty as the very substance of Good. Then what we call the moral proof brings us in one leap to the true God, revealing himself as God of Charity.”

“Credulity, sectarianism, and sloth are three natural tendencies of man. Too often he canonizes them under nobler names.”

“The Gospel is full of paradoxes, by which the mind is at first troubled. The Savior teaches with great simplicity, yet he says also, "Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in me." And it is a question, at least, whether all substantial spiritual doctrine must not of necessity take a paradoxical form.”