Francois Rabelais quotes:

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

To good and true love fear is forever affixed.

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.

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

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

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

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

Don't limp in front of the lame.

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

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.

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

Science without conscience is the death of the soul.

Go, all of you poor people, in the name of God the Creator, and let him forever be your guide. And henceforth, do not be beguiledby these idle and useless pilgrimages. See to your families, and work, each one of you, in your vocation, raise your children, and live as the good Apostle Paul teaches you.

Appetite comes with eating.

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

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

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

No clock is more regular than the belly.

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.

A crier of green sauce.

Parisians are so besotted, so silly and so naturally inept that a street player, a seller of indulgences, a mule with its cymbals,a fiddler in the middle of a crossroads, will draw more people than would a good Evangelist preacher.

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.

To good and true love, fear is forever affixed.

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.

Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.I'd rather write about laughing than crying,For laughter makes men human, and courageous."

Frugality is for the vulgar.

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

He that has patience may compass anything.

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

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

Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind.

Misery is the company of lawsuits.

What harm in learning and getting knowledge even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a mitten, or a slipper. [Fr., Que nuist savoir tousjours et tousjours apprendre, fust ce D'un sot, d'une pot, d'une que--doufle D'un mouffe, d'un pantoufle.]

A habit does not a monk make.

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

Nature abhors a vacuum.

I never sleep in comfort save when I am hearing a sermon or praying to God.

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

A good intention does not mean honor. [Fr., A bon entendeur ne faut qu'un parole.]

Science without conscience is the soul's perdition.

There are more old drunkards than old physicians.

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

Debts and lies are generally mixed together

Looking as like - as one pea does like another

Pantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said to her tabachins, A panacea.

I drink no more than a sponge.

I do not drink more than a sponge.

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

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

A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit.

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

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

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

Debts and lies are generally mixed together.

Tell the truth and shame the devil.

Ignorance is the mother of all evils.

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

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

If you wish to avoid seeing a fool, you must first break your mirror

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

If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.

Appetite comes with eating.....but thirst goes away with drinking.

I drink eternally. For me it is an eternity of drinking, and a drinking up of eternity.

So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.

Everything comes in time to those who can wait.

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

Hungry bellies have no cars.

The most Christian France is the sole wet-nurse to the Roman court.

Indeed, said the monk, a mass, a matins, and vespers well rung are half-said.

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

How comes it that you curse, Frere Jean? It's only, said the monk, in order to embellish my language. They are the colors of Ciceronian rhetoric.

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.

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

To laugh is proper to man.

I build only living stones--men.

A man of good sense always believes what he is told, and what he finds written down.

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

In this mortal life, nothing is blessed throughout.

It is quite a common and vulgar thing among humans to understand, foresee, know and predict the troubles of others. But oh what a rare thing it is to predict, know, foresee and understand one's own troubles.

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.

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.

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

There is nothing holy nor sacred to those who have abandoned God and reason in order to follow their perverse desires.

Oh how unhappy is the prince served by such men who are so easily corrupted.

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

Always open all gates and roads to your enemies, and rather make for them a bridge of silver, to get rid of them. [Fr., Ouvrez toujours a vos ennemis toutes les portes et chemin, et plutot leur faites un pont d'argent, afin de les renvoyer.]

Hungry bellies have no ears. [Fr., La ventre affame n'point d'oreilles.]

According to true military art, one should never push one's enemy to the point of despair, because such a state multiplies his strength and increases his courage which had already been crushed and failing, and because there is no better remedy for the health of beaten and overwhelmed men than the absence of all hope.

I am going to seek a great perhaps.

So that we may not be like the Athenians, who never consulted except after the event done. [Fr., Afin que ne semblons es Athenians, qui ne consultoient jamais sinon apres le cas faict.]

Do not limp before the lame. [Old Fr., Ne clochez pas devant les boyteus.]

Strike the iron whilst it is hot.

Oh thrice and four times happy... those who plant cabbages.

Of a young hermit, an old devil. [Fr., De jeune hermite, vieil diable.]

Can there be any greater dotage in the world than for one to guide and direct his courses by the sound of a bell, and not by his own judgment.

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.

If you understand why a monkey in a family is always mocked and harassed, you understand why monks are rejected by all--both old and young.

Giving words [is] an act of lovers.

An old monkey never makes a pretty face.

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

It is said, proverbially, that happy is the doctor who is called in when the disease is on its way out.

All things have their ends and cycles. And when they have reached their highest point, they are in their lowest ruin, for they cannot last for long in such a state. Such is the end for those who cannot moderate their fortune and prosperity with reason and temperance.

The deed will be accomplished with the least amount of bloodshed possible, and, if possible ..., we'll save all the souls and send them happily off to their abode.

No noble man ever hated good wine.

War begun without good provision of money beforehand for going through with it is but as a breathing of strength and blast that will quickly pass away. Coin is the sinews of war.

Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws.

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.

Because, according to the sage Solomon, wisdom does not enter into a soul that seeks after evil, and knowledge without conscienceis the ruin of the soul, it behooves you to serve, love and fear God and to put all your thoughts and hope in him, and by faith founded in charity, be joined to him, such that you never be separated from him by sin.

I've often heard it said, as the common proverb goes, that a fool can teach a wise man well.

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.

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.

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

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.