François Rabelais

Speak the truth and shame the Devil.

François Rabelais (ca. 1493 -1553-04-09) was a French humanist writer of satirical romances.

Sourced

• Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.
  • Translation: I am going to seek a grand perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played.
  • Alleged last words. From MOTTEUX, Life of Rabelais

• Je n'ai rien vaillant; je dois beaucoup; je donne le reste aux pauvres.
  • Translation: I have nothing, owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.
  • His one line will.

Pantagruel (Les horribles et espouvantables faictz & prouesses du tres renommé Pantagruel Roy des Dipsodes, filz du grand géant Gargantua) (1532)

• [Mais par ce que selon le sage Salomon,] Sapience n’entre point en ame malivole, & science sans conscience n’est que ruyne de l’ame.
  • Translation: [But as wise Solomon said,] Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
  • Ch. 8

Gargantua (La vie inestimable du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel) (1534)

• Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme.
  • Translation: To laugh is proper to man.
  • Rabelais to the Reader (prefatory note on leading page)

• [Puis pour curieuse leczon, & meditation frequente] rompre l'os, & sugcer la substantificque mouelle.
  • Translation: [And then for strange lesson and frequent meditation,] break the bone and suck out the substantific marrow.
  • Prologue

• Les heures sont faictez pour l'homme, & non l'homme pour les heures.
  • Translation: I never follow the clock: hours were made for man, not man for hours.
  • Ch. 39 (frère Iean des Entommeures)

• Et guerre faicte sans bonne provision d'argent, n'a qu'un souspirail de vigueur. Les nerfz des batailles sont les pecunes.
  • Translation: 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.
  • Ch. 44

Le Quart-Livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel (1548, 1552)

• Certaine gayeté d'esprit conficte en mespris des choses fortuites.
  • Translation: a certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune.
  • Prologue de l'autheur

• A son [Timon le Misanthrope] exemple ie denonce à ces calumniateurs diaboliques, que tous ayent à se pendre dedans le dernier chanteau de ceste lune. Ie les fourniray de licolz.
• Translation: Following his example, I encourage all these diabolical calumniators to go hang themselves before the last moon's quarter is done. I will supply the rope.
  • Prologue of the 1548 "old" edition

• ...l'estomach affamé n'a poinct d'aureilles, il n'oyt goutte.
  • Translation: The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.
  • Ch. LXIII

Attributed

• Appetite comes with eating...but the thirst goes away with drinking.
  • Book I, Ch. 5

• How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?
  • Book I, Ch. 52

• Fais ce que voudras.
  • Translation: Do what thou wilt.
  • Book I, Ch. 57

• Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money.
  • Book II, Ch. 16

• So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.
  • Book II, Ch. 29

• He that has patience may compass anything.
  • Book IV (1548), Ch. 48

• We will take the good will for the deed.
  • Book IV, Ch. 49

• Speak the truth and shame the Devil.
  • Book V (1552), author's prologue

• Plain as the nose in a man's face.
  • Book V, author's prologue

• Looking as like...as one pea does like another.
  • Book V, Ch. 2