François Rabelais
75 quotes
Biography
François Rabelais was a French writer who has been called the first great French prose author. A humanist of the French Renaissance and Greek scholar, he attracted opposition from both Protestant theologian John Calvin and from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
"I go to seek a Great Perhaps."
"Science without conscience is the soul's perdition."
"Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée."
"Je n'ai rien vaillant; je dois beaucoup; je donne le reste aux pauvres."
"Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme."
"It becomes you to be wise to smell, feel, and have in estimation these fair books, de haulte gresse, light in the pursuit, and bold at the encounter. Then you must, by a curious reading and frequent meditation, break the bone and suck out the substantific marrow, — that is what I mean by these Pythagorean symbols, — with assured hope of becoming well-advised and valiant by the said reading; for in it you shall find another kind of taste, and a doctrine more profound, which will disclose unto you deep doctrines and dreadful mysteries, as well in what concerneth our religion as matters of the public state and life economical."
"I drink no more than a sponge."
"Appetite comes with eating, says Angeston. But the thirst goes away with drinking."
"Natura abhorret vacuum."
"As soon as he was born, he cried not as other babes use to do, Miez, miez, miez, miez, but with a high, sturdy, and big voice shouted about, Some drink, some drink, some drink, as inviting all the world to drink with him. The noise hereof was so extremely great, that it was heard in both the countries at once of Beauce and Bibarois. I doubt me, that you do not thoroughly believe the truth of this strange nativity. Though you believe it not, I care not much: but an honest man, and of good judgment, believeth still what is told him, and that which he finds written."
"Thought the moon was made of green cheese."
"He always looked a given horse in the mouth."
"By robbing Peter he paid Paul, … and hoped to catch larks if ever the heavens should fall."
"He did not care a button for it."
"How well I feathered my nest."
"He laid him squat as a flounder."
"So much is a man worth as he esteems himself."
"Send them home as merry as crickets."
"A good crier of green sauce."
"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."
"Les heures sont faictez pour l'homme, et non l'homme pour les heures."
"Being come down from thence towards Seville, they were heard by Gargantua, who said then unto those that were with him, Comrades and fellow-soldiers, we have here met with an encounter, and they are ten times in number more than we. Shall we charge them or no? What a devil, said the monk, shall we do else? Do you esteem men by their number rather than by their valour and prowess? With this he cried out, Charge, devils, charge! Which when the enemies heard, they thought certainly that they had been very devils, and therefore even then began all of them to run away as hard as they could drive, Drawforth only excepted, who immediately settled his lance on its rest, and therewith hit the monk with all his force on the very middle of his breast, but, coming against his horrific frock, the point of the iron being with the blow either broke off or blunted, it was in matter of execution as if you had struck against an anvil with a little wax-candle."
"Comrades, I hear the track and beating of the enemy's horse-feet, and withal perceive that some of them come in a troop and full body against us. Let us rally and close here, then set forward in order, and by this means we shall be able to receive their charge to their loss and our honour."
"Et guerre faicte sans bonne provision d'argent, n'a qu'un souspirail de vigueur. Les nerfz des batailles sont les pecunes."
"Corn is the sinews of war."