“Protect the workers, encourage the rich.”

“The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.”

“Common right is nought but the protection of all radiating over the right of each. This protection of all is termed Fraternity. The point of intersection of all these aggregated sovereignties is called Society. This intersection being a junction, this point is a knot. Hence comes what is called the social tie.”

“In all his trials he felt encouraged and sometimes even upbourne by a secret force within. The soul helps the body, and at certain moments uplifts it. It is the only bird which sustains its cage.”

“He was a friendly but sad figure. People said of him: 'A rich man who is not proud. A fortunate man who does not look happy.”

“The mother...swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood. ”

“With a remainder of that brotherly compassion which is never totally absent from the heart of a drinker, Phoebus rolled Jehan with his foot onto one of those poor man's pillows which Providence provides on all the street corners of Paris and which the rich disdainfully refer to as heaps of garbage.”