Top 100 François Rabelais Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 3

51. “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.”

— François Rabelais

52. “The scent of wine, oh how much more agreeable, laughing, praying, celestial and delicious it is than that of oil!”

— François Rabelais

53. “No clock is more regular than the belly.”

— François Rabelais

54. “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.”

— François Rabelais

55. “A habit does not a monk make.”

— François Rabelais

56. “He who has not an adventure has not horse or mule, so says Solomon. – Who is too adventurous, said Echephron, – loses horse and mule.”

— François Rabelais

57. “Frugality is for the vulgar.”

— François Rabelais

58. “A certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune.”

— François Rabelais

59. “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

60. “I have known many who could not when they would, for they had not done it when they could.”

— François Rabelais

61. “If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.”

— François Rabelais

62. “In their rules there was only one clause: Do what you will.”

— François Rabelais

63. “Half the world does not know how the other half lives.”

— François Rabelais

64. “Not everyone is a debtor who wishes to be; not everyone who wishes makes creditors.”

— François Rabelais

65. “But where are the snows of last year? That was the greatest concern of Villon, the Parisian poet.”

— François Rabelais

66. “How do you know antiquity was foolish? How do you know the present is wise? Who made it foolish? Who made it wise?”

— François Rabelais

67. “Languages exist by arbitrary institutions and conventions among peoples; words, as the dialecticians tell us, do not signify naturally, but at our pleasure.”

— François Rabelais

68. “There is nothing holy nor sacred to those who have abandoned God and reason in order to follow their perverse desires.”

— François Rabelais

69. “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.”

— François Rabelais

70. “I do not drink more than a sponge.”

— François Rabelais

71. “I drink eternally. For me it is an eternity of drinking, and a drinking up of eternity.”

— François Rabelais

72. “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.”

— François Rabelais

73. “Keep running after a dog and he will never bite you.”

— François Rabelais

74. “When undertaking marriage, everyone must be the judge of his own thoughts, and take counsel from himself.”

— François Rabelais

75. “The most Christian France is the sole wet-nurse to the Roman court.”

— François Rabelais

76. “How can I govern others, who can’t even govern myself?”

— François Rabelais

77. “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.”

— François Rabelais

78. “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.”

— François Rabelais

79. “Pantagruelism is a certain gaitey of the spirit consisting in a disdain for the hazards of fortune.”

— François Rabelais

80. “Early rising is no pleasure; early drinking’s just the measure.”

— François Rabelais

81. “The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.”

— François Rabelais

82. “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.”

— François Rabelais

83. “It is said, proverbially, that happy is the doctor who is called in when the disease is on its way out.”

— François Rabelais

84. “A man of good sense always believes what he is told, and what he finds written down.”

— François Rabelais

85. “It is folly to put the plough in front of the oxen.”

— François Rabelais

86. “Between two stools one sits on the ground.”

— François Rabelais

87. “How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?”

— François Rabelais

88. “Indeed, said the monk, a mass, a matins, and vespers well rung are half-said.”

— François Rabelais

89. “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.”

— François Rabelais

90. “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

91. “There are more old drunkards than old physicians.”

— François Rabelais

92. “We will take the good-will for the deed.”

— François Rabelais

93. “Strike the iron whilst it is hot.”

— François Rabelais

94. “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

95. “Machination is worth more than force.”

— François Rabelais

96. “There is no truer cause of unhappiness amongst men than, where naturally expecting charity and benevolence, they receive harm and vexation.”

— François Rabelais

97. “Misery is the company of lawsuits.”

— François Rabelais

98. “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

99. “A crier of green sauce.”

— François Rabelais

100. “I won’t undertake war until I have tried all the arts and means of peace.”

— François Rabelais