Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've often heard it said, as the common proverb goes, that a fool can teach a wise man well.
But where are the snows of last year? That was the greatest concern of Villon, the Parisian poet.
Friends, you will notice that in this world there are many more ballocks than men. Remember this.
Pantagruelism is a certain gaitey of the spirit consisting in a disdain for the hazards of fortune.
It is said, proverbially, that happy is the doctor who is called in when the disease is on its way out.
For God, nothing is impossible. And, if he wanted, in the future women would give birth from their ears.
A war undertaken without sufficient monies has but a wisp of force. Coins are the very sinews of battles.
When undertaking marriage, everyone must be the judge of his own thoughts, and take counsel from himself.
Debts and lies are generally mixed together. [Fr., Debtes et mensonges sont ordinairement ensemble rallies.]
It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.
If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.
The scent of wine, oh how much more agreeable, laughing, praying, celestial and delicious it is than that of oil!
Science sans conscience n' est que le ruine de l'âme. Knowledge without conscience is but the ruine of the soule.
How do you know antiquity was foolish? How do you know the present is wise? Who made it foolish? Who made it wise?
I urge you to spend your youth profitably in study and virtue.... In brief, let me see in you an abyss of knowledge.
There are more old drunkards than old physicians. [Fr., Il y a plus de vieux ivrongnes qu'il y a de vieux medecins.]
There is nothing holy nor sacred to those who have abandoned God and reason in order to follow their perverse desires.
Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep Do's ten thousand Secrets keep, With attentive Ear I wait; Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate.
You have no obligation under the sun other than to discover your real needs, to fulfill them, and to rejoice in doing so.
Against fortune the carter cracks his whip in vain. [Fr., Centre fortune, la diverse un chartier rompit nazardes son fouet.]
He who has not an adventure has not horse or mule, so says Solomon.--Who is too adventurous, said Echephron,--loses horse and mule.
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.
There is no truer cause of unhappiness amongst men than, where naturally expecting charity and benevolence, they receive harm and vexation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is the custom on Africa to always produce new and monstrous things. [Fr., Afrique est coustumiere toujours choses produire nouvelles et monstrueuses.]
Languages exist by arbitrary institutions and conventions among peoples; words, as the dialecticians tell us, do not signify naturally, but at our pleasure.
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.
Nature made the day for exercise, work and seeing to one's business; and ... it provides us with a candle, which is to say the bright and joyous light of the sun.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.]
Time, which wears down and diminishes all things, augments and increases good deeds, because a good turn liberally offered to a reasonable man grows continually through noble thought and memory.
When my soul leaves this human dwelling, I will not consider myself to have completely died, but to pass from one state to another, given that, in you and by you, I remain in my visible image in this world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What harm in learning and getting knowledge even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a mitten, or a slipper. [Fr., Que nuist savoir tousjours et tousjours apprendre, fust ce D'un sot, d'une pot, d'une que--doufle D'un mouffe, d'un pantoufle.]