Rabelais Quotes & Sayings

Tell the truth and shame the devil. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

A habit does not a monk make. — Francois Rabelais

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

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

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

Strike the iron whilst it is hot. — Francois Rabelais

We will take the good-will for the deed. — Francois Rabelais

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

It is better to write of laughter than of tears, for laughter is the property of man. — Francois Rabelais

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

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

Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps. — John Green

If you wish to be good "Pantagruelists" (which is to say, live in peace, joy, health, and always dining well), never put too much faith in people who look out through a hole. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

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

I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose ... — Francois Rabelais

And also celebrate the Skill of the Scythians in that Art, who sent once to Darius King of Persia an Embassador that made him a present of a Bird, a Frog, a Mouse, and five Arrows, without speaking one word; and being ask'd what those Presents meant, and if he had Commission to say any thing, answer'd that he had not; Which puzzl'd and gravell'd Darius very much; till Gobrias, one of the seven Captains that had kil'd the Magi explain'd it, saying to Darius, By these Gifts and Offerings the Scythians silently tell you, that except the Persians like Birds fly up to Heaven, like Mice hide themselves near the Centre of the Earth, or like Frogs dive to the very bottom of Ponds and Lakes, they shall be destroyed by the Power and Arrows of the Scythians. — Francois Rabelais

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

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

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. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

If I fall asleep, it is because I am overloaded. I sleep because one hour with Henry contains five years of my life, and one phrase, one caress answers the expectations of a hundred nights. When I hear him laugh, I say, "I have heard Rabelais.". And I swallow his laughter like bread and wine. — Anais Nin

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

Giving words [is] an act of lovers. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

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

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. — Francois Rabelais

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

a child is a fire to be lit, not a vase to be filled — Francois Rabelais

His religion at best is an anxious wish,-like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps. — John Keats

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. — Francois Rabelais

I never drink without a thirst, either present or future. — Francois Rabelais

Appetite comes with eating ... but thirst goes away with drinking. — Francois Rabelais

A mother-in-law dies only when another devil is needed in hell. — Francois Rabelais

There are more old drunkards than old physicians. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

If on a friend's bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,
You are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain. — Alexander Theroux

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

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. — Francois Rabelais

No noble man ever hated good wine. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

Ignorance is the mother of all evils. — Francois Rabelais

O laugh is proper to the man. — Francois Rabelais

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

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

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

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

His books were part of him. Each year of his life, it seemed, his books became more and more a part of him. This room, thirty by twenty feet, and the walls of shelves filled with books, had for him the murmuring of many voices. In the books of Herodotus, Tacitus, Rabelais, Thomas Browne, John Milton, and scores of others, he had found men of face and voice more real to him than many a man he had met for a smoke and a talk. — Carl Sandburg

..to laugh is proper to the man. — Francois Rabelais

I am going to seek a great perhaps; draw a curtain, the farce is played out. — Francois Rabelais

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

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. — Francois Rabelais

Machination is worth more than force. — Francois Rabelais

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

Never did a great man hate good wine. — Francois Rabelais

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

Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind. — Francois Rabelais

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

I drink no more than a sponge. — Francois Rabelais

Bring down the curtain,
the farce is played out. — Francois Rabelais

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

May the fire of St. Anthony fly up thy fundament. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

Appetite comes with eating. — Francois Rabelais

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

For he who can wait, everything comes in time. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

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

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 — Francois Rabelais

I urge you to spend your youth profitably in study and virtue ... In brief, let me see in you an abyss of knowledge. — Francois Rabelais

He that has patience may compass anything. — Francois Rabelais

The appetite grows with eating. — Francois Rabelais

Bring down the curtain, the farce is over — Francois Rabelais

I do not drink more than a sponge. — Francois Rabelais

To good and true love fear is forever affixed. — Francois Rabelais

Oh thrice and four times happy ... those who plant cabbages. — Francois Rabelais

In this mortal life, nothing is blessed throughout. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

I have nothing, I owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor. — Francois Rabelais

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

I drink for the thirst to come. — Francois Rabelais

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

There is a class whose value I should designate as Favorites: such as Froissart's Chronicles; Southey's Chronicle of the Cid ; Cervantes ; Sully's Memoirs ; Rabelais ; Montaigne ; Izaak Walton; Evelyn; Sir Thomas Browne; Aubrey ; Sterne ; Horace Walpole ; Lord Clarendon ; Doctor Johnson ; Burke, shedding floods of light on his times ; Lamb; Landor ; and De Quincey ;- a list, of course, that may easily be swelled, as dependent on individual caprice. Many men are as tender and irritable as lovers in reference to these predilections. Indeed, a man's library is a sort of harem, and I observe that tender readers have a great pudency in showing their books to a stranger. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Debts and lies are generally mixed together. — Francois Rabelais

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

A crier of green sauce. — Francois Rabelais

I build only living stones
men. — Francois Rabelais

Keep running after a dog and he will never bite you. — Francois Rabelais

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

I go to see a Greater Perhaps. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

Science without conscience is the death of the soul. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

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. — Francois Rabelais

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

A bellyful is a bellyful. — Francois Rabelais