M. Mabeuf’s political opinion was a passionate fondness for plants, and a still greater one for books. He had, like everybody else, his termination in ist, without which nobody could have lived in those times, but he was neither a royalist, nor a Bonapartist, nor a chartist, nor an Orleanist, nor an anarchist; he was an old-bookist.

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.

Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.

He had slipped, climbed, rolled, searched, walked, persevered, that is all. Such is the secret of all triumphs.

Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign.

Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.