A war undertaken without sufficient monies has but a wisp of force. Coins are the very sinews of battles.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Ignorance is the mother of all evils.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Pantagruel
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.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
We have here other fish to fry.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
I know many that could not when they should because they did not when they could.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
A certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Spare your breath to cool your porridge.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
- I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
- For laughter makes men human, and courageous.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, introduction, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Plain as the nose in a man's face.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
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.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
I never follow the clock: hours were made for man, not man for hours.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
Let us fly and save our bacon.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
I encourage all these diabolical calumniators to go hang themselves before the last moon's quarter is done. I will supply the rope.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
What cannot be cured must be endured.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
And so on to the end of the chapter.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
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.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
He that has patience may compass anything.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel
I drink no more than a sponge.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
- The holy sacred Word,
- May it always afford
- T' us all in common,
- Both man and woman,
- A spiritual shield and sword,
- The holy sacred Word.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Pantagruel
Time, which gnaws and diminisheth all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous thinking of it and remembering it.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
I am going to seek the great perhaps.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, last words according to Peter Anthony Motteux, Life of Rabelais (1694)
God moderates all at His pleasure.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Pantagruel
Strength avails not a coward.
FRANCOIS RABELAIS, attributed, Day's Collacon
Hungry bellies have no ears.
FRANCOIS RABELAIS, Pantagruel
To laugh is proper to man.
FRANCOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua
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