François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel

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By robbing Peter he paid Paul, … and hoped to catch larks if ever the heavens should fall.

François Rabelais
You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled.

François 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.

François Rabelais
It is enough to fright you out of your seven senses.

François Rabelais
On the third day the sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence.
We met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military men that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first because they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked us whence we came.

François Rabelais
If in your soil it takes, to heaven
A thousand thousand thanks be given;
And say with France, it goodly goes,
Where the Pantagruelion grows.

François Rabelais
Loupgarou was come with all his giants, who, seeing Pantagruel in a manner alone, was carried away with temerity and presumption, for hopes that he had to kill the good man. Whereupon he said to his companions the giants, You wenchers of the low country, by Mahoom, if any of you undertake to fight against these men here, I will put you cruelly to death. It is my will, that you let me fight single. In the meantime you shall have good sport to look upon us.

François Rabelais
Looking as like... as one pea does like another.

François Rabelais
Panurge had no sooner heard this, but he was upon the high-rope.

François Rabelais
There was left only the monk to provide for, whom Gargantua would have made Abbot of Seville, but he refused it. He would have given him the Abbey of Bourgueil, or of Sanct Florent, which was better, or both, if it pleased him ; but the monk gave him a very peremptory answer, that he would never take upon him the charge nor government of monks. For how shall I be able, said he, to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself: If you think I have done you, or may hereafter do you any acceptable service, give me leave to found an abbey after my own mind and fancy.

François Rabelais
He that has patience may compass anything.

François Rabelais
Do not believe what I tell you here any more than if it were some tale of a tub.

François Rabelais
Oh thrice and four times happy those who plant cabbages!

François Rabelais
Appetite comes with eating, says Angeston. But the thirst goes away with drinking.

François Rabelais
Our forefathers and ancestors of all times have been of this nature and disposition, that, upon the winning of a battle, they have chosen rather, for a sign and memorial of their triumphs and victories, to erect trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by architecture in the lands which they had conquered. For they did hold in greater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality than the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the injury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone.

François Rabelais
Alluring, courtly, comely, fine, complete,
Wise, personable, ravishing, and sweet,
Come joys enjoy. The Lord celestial
Hath given enough wherewith to please us all.

François Rabelais
I never follow the clock: hours were made for man, not man for hours.

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

François Rabelais
There has been here from other countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would serve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against us at their coming; and much they got by it after all. Troth, we e'en fitted them and clawed 'em off with a vengeance, for all they looked so big and so grum.
Pray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you do not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking, disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady?

François Rabelais
Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that the one half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth.

François Rabelais
Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.

François Rabelais
Knowledge without conscience is but the ruine of the soule.

François Rabelais
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.

François Rabelais
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
Happy is the physician, whose coming is desired at the declension of a disease.

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

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

François 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.

François Rabelais
Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money.

François Rabelais
So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.

François Rabelais