Francois Rabelais Quotations

To good and true love, fear is forever affixed.

If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.

How do you know antiquity was foolish? How do you know the present is wise? Who made it foolish? Who made it wise?

Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.

From the gut comes the strut, and where hunger reigns, strength abstains.

I place no hope in my strength, nor in my works: but all my confidence is in God my protector, who never abandons those who have put all their hope and thought in him.

No clock is more regular than the belly.

We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us.

Time, which wears down and diminishes all things, augments and increases good deeds, because a good turn liberally offered to a reasonable man grows continually through noble thought and memory.

If you wish to avoid seeing a fool you must first break your looking glass

The right moment wears a full head of hair: when it has been missed, you can't get it back; it's bald in the back of the head and never turns around.

The scent of wine, oh how much more agreeable, laughing, praying, celestial and delicious it is than that of oil!

Friends, you will notice that in this world there are many more ballocks than men. Remember this.

Everything comes in time to those who can wait.

In their rules there was only one clause: Do what you will.

It is better to write of laughter than of tears, for laughter is the property of man.

One falls to the ground in trying to sit on two stools.

I won't undertake war until I have tried all the arts and means of peace.

It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.

I have known many who could not when they would, for they had not done it when they could.

How can I govern others, who can't even govern myself?

The farce is finished. I go to seek a vast perhaps.

When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.

Remove idleness from the world and soon the arts of Cupid would perish.

There is no truer cause of unhappiness amongst men than, where naturally expecting charity and benevolence, they receive harm and vexation.

Because just as arms have no force outside if there is no counsel within a house, study is vain and counsel useless that is not put to virtuous effect when the time calls.

For he who can wait, everything comes in time.

Believe me, 'tis a godlike thing to lend; to owe is a heroic virtue.

There are more old drunkards than old physicians.

Half the world does not know how the other half lives.

Science without conscience is the death of the soul.

How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?

When undertaking marriage, everyone must be the judge of his own thoughts, and take counsel from himself.

The remedy for thirst? It is the opposite of the one for a dog bite: run always after a dog, he'll never bite you; drink always before thirst, and it will never overtake you.

It is folly to put the plough in front of the oxen.

Science sans conscience n' est que le ruine de l'âme. Knowledge without conscience is but the ruine of the soule.

Looking as like - as one pea does like another

The very well and abyss of an encyclopaedia.

A young Saint - an old Devil, (mark this, an old saying, and as true a one as, a Young Whore an old Saint)

Appetite comes with eating.

Bring down the curtain, the farce is over

All's well in the end, if you've only the patience to wait.

I never drink without a thirst, either present or future.

Giving words [is] an act of lovers.

Such is the nature and make-up of the French that they are only good at the start. Then they are worse than devils, but, given time, they're less than women.

Pantagruelism is a certain gaitey of the spirit consisting in a disdain for the hazards of fortune.

Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.

I know of a charm by way of a prayer that will preserve a man from the violence of guns and all manner of fire-weapons and engines but it will do me no good because I do not believe it

The Devil was sick - the Devil a monk would be, The Devil was well the devil a monk was he

Languages exist by arbitrary institutions and conventions among peoples; words, as the dialecticians tell us, do not signify naturally, but at our pleasure.

Keep running after a dog and he will never bite you.

I owe much; I have nothing; the rest I leave to the poor.

I drink for the thirst to come.

Tell the truth and shame the devil.

Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep Do's ten thousand Secrets keep, With attentive Ear I wait; Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate.

The appetite grows with eating.

A little rain beats down a big wind. Long drinking bouts break open the tun(der).

Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind.

I never sleep comfortably except when I am at sermon or when I pray to God.

Machination is worth more than force.

You have no obligation under the sun other than to discover your real needs, to fulfill them, and to rejoice in doing so.

A crier of green sauce.

Petite ville, grand renom. Small town, great renown.

Hungry bellies have no cars.

But where are the snows of last year? That was the greatest concern of Villon, the Parisian poet.

Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.

Time, which gnaws and diminisheth all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous thinking of it and remembering it.

I have already related to you great and admirable things; but, if you might be induced to adventure upon the hazard of believing some other divinity of this sacred Pantagruelion, I very willingly would tell it you. Believe it, if you will, or otherwise, believe it not, I care not which of them you do, they are both alike to me. It shall be sufficient for my purpose to have told you the truth, and the truth I will tell you.

If in your soil it takes, to heaven A thousand thousand thanks be given; And say with France, it goodly goes, Where the Pantagruelion grows.

We will take the good-will for the deed.

A certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune.

The probity that scintillizes in the superfices of your persons informs my ratiocinating faculty, in a most stupendous manner, of the radiant virtues latent within the precious caskets and ventricles of your minds.

The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.

A war undertaken without sufficient monies has but a wisp of force. Coins are the very sinews of battles.

To laugh is proper to man.

I'd rather write about laughing than crying, For laughter makes men human, and courageous.

Between two stools one sits on the ground.

He who has not an adventure has not horse or mule, so says Solomon.--Who is too adventurous, said Echephron,--loses horse and mule.

The Lord forbid that I should be out of debt, as if indeed I could not be trusted.

Science without conscience is the soul's perdition.

If you want to avoid seeing an idiot, break the mirror.

Death is the vast perhaps.

I am going to seek the great Perhaps.

Frugality is for the vulgar.

A bellyful is a bellyful.

One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span, Because to laugh is proper to the man.

I am going to seek a great purpose, draw the curtain, the farce is played.

Never did a great man hate good wine.

It's a shame to be called "educated" those who do not study the ancient Greek writers.

Early rising is no pleasure; early drinking's just the measure.

An old monkey never makes a pretty face.

Ha! for a divine and lordly manor, there is nothing like solid ground.

I urge you to spend your youth profitably in study and virtue.... In brief, let me see in you an abyss of knowledge.

When my soul leaves this human dwelling, I will not consider myself to have completely died, but to pass from one state to another, given that, in you and by you, I remain in my visible image in this world.

Gargantua, at the age of four hundred four score and forty- four years begat his son Pantagruel, from his wife, named Badebec, daughter of the King of the Amaurotes in Utopia, who died in child-birth: because he was marvelously huge and so heavy that he could not come to light without suffocating his mother.

Do you know what Agelisas said, when he was asked why the great city of Lacedomonie was not girded with walls? Because, pointing out the inhabitants and citizens of the city, so expert in military discipline and so strong and well armed: "Here," he said, "are the walls of the city," meaning that there is no wall but of bones, and that towns and cities can have no more secure nor stronger wall than the virtue of their citizens and inhabitants.

If you say to me: "Master, it would seem that you weren't too terribly wise to have written these bits of nonsense and pleasant mockeries," I respond that you are hardly more so in finding amusement in reading them.

The age was still dark and reeked of the havoc and misfortunes of the Goths who had put all good literature to destruction. But, by God's goodness, in my time light and dignity were returned to letters, and I see there such improvement that today I would have great difficulty being admitted to the most elementary classes--I, who in my time was reputed to be (and not wrongly) to be the most knowledgeable person of the century.

Wait a second while I take a swig off this bottle: it's my true and only Helicon, my Caballine fount, my sole Enthusiasm. Here, drinking, I deliberate, I reason, I resolve and conclude. After the epilogue I laugh, I write, I compose, I drink. Ennius drinking would write, writing would drink.

I recognize in [my readers] a specific form and individual property, which our predecessors called Pantagruelism, by means of which they never take anything the wrong way that they know to stem from good, honest and loyal hearts.