Francois Rabelais Quotes

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

Plain as a nose in a man's face.

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.

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

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

I do not drink more than a sponge.

Between two stools one sits on the ground.

Don't limp in front of the lame.

Debts and lies are generally mixed together.

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

For God, nothing is impossible. And, if he wanted, in the future women would give birth from their ears.

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

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.

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

A bellyful is a bellyful.

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

Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws.

An old monkey never makes a pretty face.

Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.

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.

There are more old drunkards than old physicians.

I drink for the thirst to come.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Not everyone is a debtor who wishes to be; not everyone who wishes makes creditors.