Quotes from book
Gargantua and Pantagruel

Name: Gargantua and Pantagruel
Author: Francois Rabelais

Francois RabelaisOriginal title La vie très horrifique du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel (French, 1534)

The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, which tells of the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel . The text is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, and features much crudity, scatological humor, and violence .

“You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 50.

“Necessity has no law.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 15.

“Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 19.

“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.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 20 : How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song

“By robbing Peter he paid Paul, … and hoped to catch larks if ever the heavens should fall.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 11.

“This flea which I have in mine ear.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Third Book (1546), Chapter 31.

“The Devil was sick,—the Devil a monk would be;
The Devil was well,—the devil a monk was he.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 24.

“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.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Prologue.
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534)

“You shall never want rope enough.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Author's prologue.
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564)

“I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 28.

“Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Pantagruel (1532), Chapter 16.

“What do you say? cried they; do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy? Truly, truly, sweet cousins, quoth Panurge, we are a silly sort of grout-headed lobcocks, an't please you; be so kind as to forgive us if we chance to knock words out of joint. As for anything else, we are downright honest fellows and true hearts.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 19 : How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy

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

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Original: …l'estomach affamé n'a poinct d'aureilles, il n'oyt goutte.
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 63.

“Send them home as merry as crickets.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 29.

“Thought I to myself, we shall never come off scot-free.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 15.

“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.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Et guerre faicte sans bonne provision d'argent, n'a qu'un souspirail de vigueur. Les nerfz des batailles sont les pecunes.
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 44.

“Appetite comes with eating, says Angeston. But the thirst goes away with drinking.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 5.

“Thought the moon was made of green cheese.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 11.

“He laid him squat as a flounder.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 27.

“Plain as the nose in a man's face.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Author's prologue.
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564)