Ernest Renan

The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.

Blessed are the blind, for they know not enough to ask why.

All history is incomprehensible without Christ.

You may take great comfort from the fact that suffering inwardly for the sake of truth proves abundantly that one loves it and marks one out as being of the elect.

In morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact.

He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.

No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.

Let us remember that sorrow alone is the creator of great things.

Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking.

All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.

I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.

When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.

To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed among men. To accomplish this less pure paths must be followed.

Man makes holy what he believes.

As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.

Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people.

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

Communism is in conflict with human nature.

Man is not on this earth merely to be happy, or even to be simply honest. He is there to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility and to surmount the vulgarity of almost everybody.

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

God, if there is a God, take my soul, if I have a soul.