Whilst no people appears in history without the sign and palladium of a positive faith, without temple, altar, priesthood--that is to say, without a constituted religion--unbelief appears only under an individual form, sometimes proscribed, sometimes tolerated, seldom powerful, and never becoming established as the public and social expression of a nation.

The great men of antiquity were poor.

Duty is the grandest of ideas, because it implies the idea of God, of the soul, of liberty, of responsibility, of immortality.

Man forms himself in his own interior, and nowhere else.

Youth is life's beautiful moment.

Whilst no people appears in history without the sign and palladium of a positive faith, without temple, altar, priesthood--that is to say, without a constituted religion--unbelief appears only under an individual form, sometimes proscribed, sometimes tolerated, seldom powerful, and never becoming established as the public and social expression of a nation.

Like every man who appears at an epoch which is historical and rendered famous by his works, Jesus Christ has a history, a history which the church and the world possess, and which, surrounded by countless memorials, has at least the same authenticity as any other history formed in the same countries, amidst the same peoples and in the same times. As, then, if I would study the lives of Brutus and Cassius, I should calmly open Plutarch, I open the Gospel to study Jesus Christ, and I do so with the same composure.