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.

If nobody loved, the sun would go out.

Everything bows to success, even grammar.

For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.

There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom.

Woman, nude, is the blue sky. Clouds and garments are an obstacle to contemplation. Beauty and infinity would be gazed upon unveiled.