“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.”

There are more old drunkards than old physicians.

To laugh is proper to man.

Of a young hermit, an old devil.

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

Time, which wears down and diminishes all things, augments and increases good deeds, because a good turn liberally offered to a reasonable man grows continually through noble thought and memory.

In this mortal life, nothing is blessed throughout.

If you want to avoid seeing an idiot, break the mirror.

A habit does not a monk make.

Debts and lies are generally mixed together.

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

I never drink without a thirst, either present or future.

Science sans conscience. Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.

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.

It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.

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

Frugality is for the vulgar.