All history is incomprehensible without Christ.
Ernest Renan

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

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.
Ernest Renan

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

Communism is in conflict with human nature.
Ernest Renan

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

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.
Ernest Renan

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

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.
Ernest Renan

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


Man makes holy what he believes.
Ernest Renan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.
Ernest Renan

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

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.
Ernest Renan