Great Throughts Treasury

"I never follow the clock: hours were made for man, not man for hours."

"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."

"I won't undertake war until I have tried all the arts and means of peace."

"I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient giants, that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa, and set among those the shady Olympus."

"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."

"If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks"

"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 ..."

"If you are careful with the signs, so when do you care what they mean? If you pay attention to to the signs, when will you aim to pay attention to What They signify?"

"If you wish to avoid seeing a fool you must first break your mirror."

"I'm going to get a big maybe."

"I'll go his halves."

"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."

"In all companies there are more fools than wise men, and the greater part always gets the better of the wiser."

"In their rules there was only one clause: Do what you will."

"In every work of genius we see our own rejected thought."

"It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money."

"It is better to write of laughter than of tears, for laughter is the property of man."

"It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it."

"It is folly to put the plough in front of the oxen."

"Let us fly and save our bacon."

"It is wise to get knowledge and learning from every source - from a sot, a pot, a fool, a winter-mitten, or an old slipper."

"Loupgarou was come with all his giants, who, seeing Pantagruel in a manner alone, was carried away with temerity and presumption, for hopes that he had to kill the good man. Whereupon he said to his companions the giants, You wenchers of the low country, by Mahoom, if any of you undertake to fight against these men here, I will put you cruelly to death. It is my will, that you let me fight single. In the meantime you shall have good sport to look upon us."

"Looking as like - as one pea does like another"

"Make three bites of a cherry."

"Needs must when the Devil drives."

"Not everyone is a debtor who wishes to be; not everyone who wishes makes creditors."

"On the third day the sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence. We met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military men that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first because they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked us whence we came."

"Now my innocence begins to weigh me down."

"One falls to the ground in trying to sit on two stools."

"Others set carts before the horses."

"Our forefathers and ancestors of all times have been of this nature and disposition, that, upon the winning of a battle, they have chosen rather, for a sign and memorial of their triumphs and victories, to erect trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by architecture in the lands which they had conquered. For they did hold in greater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality than the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the injury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone."

"Panurge then whispered me, Fellow-traveller, quoth he, hast thou not been somewhat afraid this bout? A little, said I. To tell you the truth of it, quoth he, never were the Ephraimites in a greater fear and quandary when the Gileadites killed and drowned them for saying sibboleth instead of shibboleth; and among friends, let me tell you that perhaps there is not a man in the whole country of Beauce but might easily have stopped my bunghole with a cartload of hay."

"Performed to a T."

"Pray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you do not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking, disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady?"

"Petite ville, grand renom. Small town, great renown."

"Plain as the nose in a man's face."

"Queen Whims, or Queen Quintessence (which you please), perceiving that we stood as mute as fishes, said: Your taciturnity speaks you not only disciples of Pythagoras, from whom the venerable antiquity of my progenitors in successive propagation was emaned and derives its original, but also discovers, that through the revolution of many retrograde moons, you have in Egypt pressed the extremities of your fingers with the hard tenants of your mouths, and scalptized your heads with frequent applications of your unguicules. In the school of Pythagoras, taciturnity was the symbol of abstracted and superlative knowledge, and the silence of the Egyptians was agnited as an expressive manner of divine adoration; this caused the pontiffs of Hierapolis to sacrifice to the great deity in silence, impercussively, without any vociferous or obstreperous sound. My design is not to enter into a privation of gratitude towards you, but by a vivacious formality, though matter were to abstract itself from me, excentricate to you my cogitations. Having spoken this, she only said to her officers, Tabachins, a panacea; and straight they desired us not to take it amiss if the queen did not invite us to dine with her; for she never ate anything at dinner but some categories, jecabots, emnins, dimions, abstractions, harborins, chelemins, second intentions, carradoths, antitheses, metempsychoses, transcendent prolepsies, and such other light food."

"Remove idleness from the world and soon the arts of Cupid would perish."

"Readers, friends, if you turn these pages put your prejudice aside, for, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous, nothing sick, or bad — or contagious. Not that I sit here glowing with pride for my book: all you'll find is laughter: that's all the glory my heart is after, seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you. I'd rather write about laughing than crying, for laughter makes men human, and courageous. BE HAPPY!"

"Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences."

"Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you. I'd rather write about laughing than crying, for laughter makes men human, and courageous."

"Science without conscience is the soul's perdition."

"Scampering as if the Devil drove them."

"Strike the iron whilst it is hot."

"Stir up the hornets."

"Send them home as merry as crickets."

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

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

"Tell the truth and shame the devil."

"The appetite grows with eating."