Jules Michelet

Jules Michelet (circa 1865)

Jules Michelet (21 August 1798 – 9 February 1874) was a French historian.

Quotes

• Each year, it is necessary to respire, to take breath again, to revive ourselves at the great living sources that forever keep their eternal freshness. Where can we find them if not at the cradle of our race, on the sacred summits from where descend the Indus and the Ganges?
  • Revel, Louis The flagrance oj India. landdmarks for the world of tomorrow. Translated from French by Dons Potter.Allahabad, Kitabistan [1946] p. 16 Quoted and attributed in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

• Whereas, in our Occident, the most dry and sterile minds brag in front of Nature, the Indian genius, the most rich and fecund of all, knows neither small nor big and has generously embraced universal fraternity, even the identity of all souls.
  • Michelet, Louis La Bible de I 'Humanite in OEuvre Paris: Larousse, 1930, vol. 5, p. 119. Quoted and attributed in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

• From India comes to us a torrent of light, a river of Right and Reason.
  • Gautier, Francois A rise again, <5 India! Har-Anand Publications New Delhi. 2000. p. 25 Quoted and attributed in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

• That year will always remain a dear and cherished memory; it was the first time I had the opportunity to read the great sacred poem of India, the divine Rarnayana. If anyone has lost the freshness of emotion, let him drink a long draught of life, and youth from that deep chalice.
  • Singhal, D P India and World Civilizatioll Pan Macnullan Limited 1993. Part II p. 213 Quoted and attributed in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

• Out of India, until [17]89 there fell a torrent of light—the river of Right and Reason.
  • quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 98

• My book is born in the full light of the sun among our forefathers, the sons oflight-Aryans, Indians, Persians and Greeks . . . . This trinity of light quite naturally met with opposition from the sombre genius of the South by way of Memphis, Carthage, Tyre and Judaea. Egypt in her monuments, Judaea with her scriptures, established their Bibles, tenebrous but of lasting influence.... Now that our parent Bibles have come to light it is more apparent to what extent the Jewish Bible belongs to another race. It is a great book, without doubt, and always will be- but how gloomy and full of gross equivocation-beautiful but full of doubt like death....
  • quoted in Poliakov, L. (1974). The Aryan myth : a history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe p 208-9

• Follow the migrations of mankind from East to West along the sun's course and along the track of the world's magnetic currents; observe its long voyage from Asia to Europe, from India to France.... At its starting point, in India, the birthplace of races and of religions, the womb of the world .
  • quoted in Poliakov, L. (1974). The Aryan myth : a history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe p 199

• India seemed to have a powerful attraction for Michelet. In the "Journal" he kept, the following note is to be found: The little ruins of the Mediterranean world can no longer assuage the craving for ruins which is felt by my ravaged heart. I need the desolations, the cataclysms of the Orient, the annihilation of whole races, the deserts...• The Hall of the Nibelungen is not enough. I need the great plain of the Indian world where the Gurus perish by the hundred thousand ....
  • quoted in Poliakov, L. (1974). The Aryan myth : a history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe p 199-200

Introduction to Universal History, 1831

• With the world began a war that will only end with the world, and not before: that of man against nature, mind against matter, freedom against fate. History is nothing but the story of this endless struggle.
  • Michelet, Jules (1843). Introduction à l'histoire universelle. Hachette. p. 9. 

• The intimate fusion of races is the identity of our nation, its personality.
  • Michelet, Jules (1843). Introduction à l'histoire universelle. Hachette. p. 9. 

• The last people in the world in whom the personality would consent to be absorbed into pantheism is the French.
  • Introduction à l'histoire universelle, new ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1879), p. 136

History of France, 1833-1867

• France is the daughter of freedom. In human progress, the essential part, the main force, is called man. Man is his own Prometheus.
  • Michelet, Jules (1893-1894). Preface de la Histoire de France. Flammarion. p. viii. 

• The history of France begins with the French language. Language is the primary sign of nationality.
  • Michelet, Jules (1861). Histoire de France. Chamerot. p. 1, book 3. 

• England is an Empire, Germany a race; France is a person.
  • Michelet, Jules (1861). Histoire de France. Chamerot. p. 103, book 3.