“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.”

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.

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.

Tell the truth and shame the devil.

Misery is the company of lawsuits.

I drink no more than a sponge.

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

There is no truer cause of unhappiness amongst men than, where naturally expecting charity and benevolence, they receive harm and vexation.

I have known many who could not when they would, for they had not done it when they could.

I owe much; I have nothing; the rest I leave to the poor.

A crier of green sauce.

Oh thrice and four times happy, those who plant cabbages.

Unpleasant reading on the subject of anger tells us that there’s not really anything wrong with it. In limited amounts. It can even be a good thing. A pressure valve.

Philosophy, art, and science are not the mental objects of an objectified brain but the three aspects under which the brain becomes subject.

Let us create extraordinary words, on condition that they be put to the most ordinary use and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object.

The brain process that results in a joke materializing where no joke was before remains a mystery. I’m not aware of any scholarly, scientific or neurological studies on the subject.

There is no debate here, just scientists and non-scientists. And since the subject is science, the non-scientists don’t get a vote.

No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

No one wants to see or read about a dull subject. I don’t consider myself a dull subject.