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.

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.

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.

I do not drink more than a sponge.

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

In this mortal life, nothing is blessed throughout.

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