“We will be Macedonians rather than Bulgarians, but Macedonians with a self-consciousness other than your Serbian-national one, with a historical past of our own, with a literary language of our own, alongside the Bulgarian one, with a Macedonian-Bulgarian national school of our own, with a national church of our own, in which the national and religious sentiment of Macedonia is not offended by the face and spirit of Serbian saints such as 'St. Sava'.”