Since we are now at the end of the first full month of Coubertin quotes, it’s time for a toast.

On that night in 1894 in which he succeeded in gaining the support necessary to launch the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin gave a toast that was full of joy. To remind you of his eloquence, we’re keeping this post short and simple:

“At the close of the Congress, electricity spread the news everywhere that Greek Olympism had come back into the world after an absence of several centuries. I lift my glass to the Olympic idea, which has traversed the mists of the ages like an all-powerful ray of sunlight and returned to illuminate the threshold of the twentieth century with a dream of joyous hope.”

This quote was drawn from a description of the Olympic Congress at the Sorbonne in Paris in June, 1894, from Coubertin’s Olympic Memoirs.