Ernest Renan Quotes

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

Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him. - Ernest Renan

Man makes holy what he believes, as he makes beautiful what he loves. - Ernest Renan

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

Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal? - 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

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

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

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