Francois Rabelais Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

Nature abhors a vacuum.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Science without conscience is the soul's perdition.

To good and true love, fear is forever affixed.

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

Tell the truth and shame the devil.

One should never pursue the hazards of fortune to their very ends andit behooves all adventurers to treat their good luck with reverence, neither bothering nor upsetting it.

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

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.

I build only living stones--men.

A crier of green sauce.

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

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

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

I'd gladly do without a valet. I'm never so well treated as when I'm without a valet.

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

No noble man ever hated good wine.

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

Appetite comes with eating.

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

Never did a great man hate good wine.

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.

Machination is worth more than force.

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.

I am going to seek a great perhaps.

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

So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.

No clock is more regular than the belly.

Few and signally blessed are those whom Jupiter has destined to be cabbage-planters. For they've always one foot on the ground andthe other not far from it. Anyone is welcome to argue about felicity and supreme happiness. But the man who plants cabbages I now positively declare to be the happiest of mortals.

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.

Ignorance is the mother of all evils.

Strike the iron whilst it is hot.

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.

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.

The appetite grows with eating.

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

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

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