Sublime

He ranked truth above custom, and justice above the law.

C’est aussi un État et un projet, celui d’une nation qui libère. Notre Histoire a fait de nous des enfants de l’État, et non du droit, comme aux États-Unis, ou du commerce maritime, comme en Angleterre. C’est à la fois un bel héritage et un héritage dangereux. L’État a formé la nation

And that is in fact Renan’s definition of a nation: To have done great things together, to want to do more, such are the essential conditions to form a people…Man is not a slave to his race, or his tongue, or his religion.

One loved his country only as much as he loved the form of government that prevailed there for the moment; and he who found its laws bad had no longer anything to attach him to it.

There was no city, however small and obscure it might be, that did not pay the greatest attention to preserving an account of what had passed within it. This was not vanity, but religion.

He remains the foremost architect of political liberalism.

Pour tout homme, le premier pays est sa patrie, et le second, c'est la france