Quotes from Ernest Renan

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.

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

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.

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.

The virtue of man is, in a word, the great proof of God.

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

Good humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us.

Communism is in conflict with human nature.

A nation is a body of people who have done great things together.

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

The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.

His glory Jesus Christ does not consist in beingplaced without the confines of history; a more real worship is paid to him, by showing that the whole of history is incomprehensible without him.

History is as much an art as a science.

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

The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul."

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

Muslims are the first victims of Islam. To liberate a Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him!

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

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

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

Man makes holy what he believes.

To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to will to do the like again, — such are the essential conditions for the making of a people.

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

O Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul.