Top 100 Rabelais Quotes
#1. His religion at best is an anxious wish,-like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.
John Keats
#2. At the emergence of the modern novel with Rabelais and Cervantes, all kinds of things were possible in a long-form prose work. Within a couple of hundred years, most of those possibilities were abandoned in favor of a text that efficiently transmitted sentiments.
Teju Cole
#3. Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.
Joanne Harris
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandise, whether he is selling Rabelais or the Fathers of the Church, the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the contents of the book. - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
Voltaire
#7. But The Master and Margarita is true to the broader sense of the novel as a freely developing form embodied in the works of Dostoevsky and Gogol, of Swift and Sterne, of Cervantes, Rabelais and Apuleius.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#8. 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
#9. 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.
Francois Rabelais
#10. I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais)I'd never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote (NEVER USE A HIGHLIGHTER IN MY BOOKS,
John Green
#11. The canons of literary taste as they have hardened in the twentieth century leave little place for Rabelais.
Roger Shattuck
#13. It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.
Francois Rabelais
#16. If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.
Francois Rabelais
#17. One should never pursue the hazards of fortune to their very ends andit behooves all adventurers to treat their good luck with reverence, neither bothering nor upsetting it.
Francois Rabelais
#18. Indeed, said the monk, a mass, a matins, and vespers well rung are half-said.
Francois Rabelais
#19. I never sleep in comfort save when I am hearing a sermon or praying to God.
Francois Rabelais
#20. The most Christian France is the sole wet-nurse to the Roman court.
Francois Rabelais
#21. I never sleep comfortably except when I am at sermon or when I pray to God.
Francois Rabelais
#22. One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span, Because to laugh is proper to the man.
Francois Rabelais
#23. I recognize in [my readers] a specific form and individual property, which our predecessors called Pantagruelism, by means of which they never take anything the wrong way that they know to stem from good, honest and loyal hearts.
Francois Rabelais
#24. 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
#26. It is said, proverbially, that happy is the doctor who is called in when the disease is on its way out.
Francois Rabelais
#27. 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
#30. It is better to write of laughter than of tears, for laughter is the property of man.
Francois Rabelais
#35. 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
#36. How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?
Francois Rabelais
#37. 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
#42. 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.
Francois Rabelais
#43. 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.]
Francois Rabelais
#45. 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.
Francois Rabelais
#46. Oh how unhappy is the prince served by such men who are so easily corrupted.
Francois Rabelais
#47. 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
#48. I won't undertake war until I have tried all the arts and means of peace.
Francois Rabelais
#51. Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.
Francois Rabelais
#53. There is nothing holy nor sacred to those who have abandoned God and reason in order to follow their perverse desires.
Francois Rabelais
#55. A mother-in-law dies only when another devil is needed in hell.
Francois Rabelais
#56. 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.
Francois Rabelais
#59. Thirst, for who in the time of innocence would have drunk without being athirst? Nay, sir, it was drinking; for privatio praesupponit habitum.
Francois Rabelais
#62. 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
#64. Wait a second while I take a swig off this bottle: it's my true and only Helicon, my Caballine fount, my sole Enthusiasm. Here, drinking, I deliberate, I reason, I resolve and conclude. After the epilogue I laugh, I write, I compose, I drink. Ennius drinking would write, writing would drink.
Francois Rabelais
#65. But where are the snows of last year? That was the greatest concern of Villon, the Parisian poet.
Francois Rabelais
#66. 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.
Francois Rabelais
#67. Remove idleness from the world and soon the arts of Cupid would perish.
Francois Rabelais
#69. 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
#71. 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
#73. Not everyone is a debtor who wishes to be; not everyone who wishes makes creditors.
Francois Rabelais
#74. The dress does not make the monk.
[Fr., L'habit ne fait le moine.]
Francois Rabelais
#76. 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
#77. A little rain beats down a big wind. Long drinking bouts break open the tun(der).
Francois Rabelais
#80. For God, nothing is impossible. And, if he wanted, in the future women would give birth from their ears.
Francois Rabelais
#81. 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
#83. The Lord forbid that I should be out of debt, as if indeed I could not be trusted.
Francois Rabelais
#84. 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
#85. I have nothing, I owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.
Francois Rabelais
#86. I've often heard it said, as the common proverb goes, that a fool can teach a wise man well.
Francois Rabelais
#89. All things have their ends and cycles. And when they have reached their highest point, they are in their lowest ruin, for they cannot last for long in such a state. Such is the end for those who cannot moderate their fortune and prosperity with reason and temperance.
Francois Rabelais
#90. Friends, you will notice that in this world there are many more ballocks than men. Remember this.
Francois Rabelais
#91. From the gut comes the strut, and where hunger reigns, strength abstains.
Francois Rabelais
#93. 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
#96. Parisians are so besotted, so silly and so naturally inept that a street player, a seller of indulgences, a mule with its cymbals,a fiddler in the middle of a crossroads, will draw more people than would a good Evangelist preacher.
Francois Rabelais
#97. 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
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