Ernest Renan - The life of Jesus (1863)

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

Ernest Renan
Jesus, in some respects, was an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government. That government seems to him purely and simply an abuse.

Ernest Renan
None of the miracles with which ancient histories are filled, occurred under scientific conditions. Observation never once contradicted, teaches us that miracles occur only in periods and countries in which they are believed in and before persons disposed to believe in them.

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
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
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
Socrates founded philosophy, and Aristotle science. There was philosophy before Socrates, and science before Aristotle; and since Socrates and since Aristotle, philosophy and science have made immense progress: but all has all been built upon the foundations they laid.

Ernest Renan
Sometimes they reasoned thus: "The Messiah ought to do such a thing, now Jesus is the Messiah, therefore Jesus has done such a thing." At other times, by an inverse process, it was said: "Such a thing has happened to Jesus; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore such a thing was to happen to the Messiah."

Ernest Renan
Jesus, in some respects, was an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government. That government seems to him purely and simply an abuse. A great social revolution, in which rank will be overturned, in which all authority in this world will be humiliated, was his dream.

Ernest Renan