Francois Rabelais Quotes

A bellyful is a bellyful.

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

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

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.

The dress does not make the monk.
[Fr., L'habit ne fait le moine.]

a child is a fire to be lit, not a vase to be filled

I am going to seek the great Perhaps.

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

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

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.

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.

I drink no more than a sponge.

This is the true nature of gratitude. Time gnaws and diminishes all things, but it increases and adds to our good deeds: anytime we have extended a generous hand to a rational human being, that goodness keeps growing and glowing in the man's heart, forever remembered, constantly contemplated.

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.

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.

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.

This year there will be an eclipse of the Moon on the fourth day of August.9 Saturn will be retrograde; Venus, direct; Mercury, variable. And a mass of other planets will not proceed as they used to.10 As a result, crabs this year will walk sideways, rope-makers work backwards, stools end up on benches, and pillows be found at the foot of the bed;11 many men's bollocks will hang down for lack of a game-bag;12 the belly will go in front and the bum be the first to sit down; nobody will find the bean in their Twelfth Night cake; not one ace will turn up in a flush; the dice will never do what you want, however much you may flatter them;13 and the beasts will talk in sundry places.

Strike the iron whilst it is hot.

Baste! enough! I sup, I wet, I humect, I moisten my gullet, I drink, and all for fear of dying. Drink always and you shall never die.

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

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

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

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

A crier of green sauce.

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

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

Don't limp in front of the lame.

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

Science without conscience is the death of the soul.

Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind.

There are more old drunkards than old physicians.

He would flay the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, and turn the hogs to the hay. He would beat the dogs before the lion, put the plough before the oxen, and claw where it did not itch.

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.

Panurge stood beside the galley with an oar in his hand, not to help the herdsmen but to prevent from from somehow clambering aboard and thus escaping their death, and all the while preached to them eloquently . . . with rhetorical flourishes about the miseries of this world and the blessings of the next, affirming that those who had passed on to that place were happier than those who lived on in this vale of tears.

Everything comes in time to those who can wait.

I have a remedy against thirst, quite contrary to that which is good against the biting of a mad dog. Keep running after a dog, and he will never bite you; drink always before the thirst, and it will never come upon you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

For he who can wait, everything comes in time.

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

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.

I do not drink more than a sponge.

Si vous faîtes attention aux signes, quand donc ferez vous attention à ce qu'ils signifient?

If you pay attention to the signs, but when will you pay attention to what they signify?

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

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.

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

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.

Thought I to myself, we shall never come off scot-free.

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.

because 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 honor

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.

and his peers are not many. You may like him or not, may attack him or sing his praises, but you cannot ignore him. He is of those that die hard. Be as fastidious as you will; make up your mind to recognize only those who are, without any manner of doubt, beyond and above all others; however few the names you keep, Rabelais' will always remain.

Frugality is for the vulgar.

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

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

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.

The appetite grows with eating.

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

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

To laugh is proper to man.

Bring down the curtain, the farce is over

Nature made the day for exercise, work and seeing to one's business; and ... it provides us with a candle, which is to say the bright and joyous light of the sun.

So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.

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

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

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

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.

It is the custom on Africa to always produce new and monstrous things.
[Fr., Afrique est coustumiere toujours choses produire nouvelles et monstrueuses.]

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

May the fire of St. Anthony fly up thy fundament.

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

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

An old monkey never makes a pretty face.

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

He that has patience may compass anything.

The great reproach always brought against Rabelais is not the want of reserve of his language merely, but his occasional studied coarseness, which is enough to spoil his whole work, and which lowers its value.

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

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

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

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

In this mortal life, nothing is blessed throughout.

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

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

Death is the vast perhaps.

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.

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.]

Misery is the company of lawsuits.

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

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.

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

Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws.

Plain as a nose in a man's face.

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

Between two stools one sits on the ground.