Francois Rabelais
Francois Rabelais
François Rabelaiswas a major French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs. His best known work is Gargantua and Pantagruel. Because of his literary power and historical importance, Western literary critics considered him one of the great writers of world literature and among the creators of modern European writing. His literary legacy is such that today, the word "Rabelaisian" has been...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionClergyman
CountryFrance
A crier of green sauce.
Petite ville, grand renom. Small town, great renown.
Hungry bellies have no cars.
But where are the snows of last year? That was the greatest concern of Villon, the Parisian poet.
Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.
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 have already related to you great and admirable things; but, if you might be induced to adventure upon the hazard of believing some other divinity of this sacred Pantagruelion, I very willingly would tell it you. Believe it, if you will, or otherwise, believe it not, I care not which of them you do, they are both alike to me. It shall be sufficient for my purpose to have told you the truth, and the truth I will tell you.
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.
We will take the good-will for the deed.
A certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune.
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.
The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.
A war undertaken without sufficient monies has but a wisp of force. Coins are the very sinews of battles.
To laugh is proper to man.