Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

Happy is the physician whose coming is desired at the declension of a disease?

those of the parliament of Mirelingois in Mirelingues, before whom Bridlegoose was arraigned for prevarication, that they will maintain it to be a worse practice to have the decision of a suit at law referred to the chance and hazard of a throw of the dice, hab nab, or luck as it will, than to have it remitted to and passed by the determination of those whose hands are full of blood and hearts of wry affections.

horned brotherhood of Vulcan.

For there is no virtuous man in the world who both naturally and with good reason will not be more hugely troubled in mind, hearing of the news of the rapt, disgrace, ignominy, and dishonour of his daughter, than of her death.

What's worse, there are but two sorts of taking prefaces, as there are but two kinds of prologues to plays; for Mr. Bays was doubtless in the right when he said that if thunder and lightning could not fright an audience into complaisance, the sight of the poet with a rope about his neck might work them into pity. Some, indeed, have bullied many of you into applause, and railed at your faults that you might think them without any; and others, more safely, have spoken kindly of you, that you might think, or at least speak, as favourably of them, and be flattered into patience. Now, I fancy, there's nothing less difficult to attempt than the first method; for, in this blessed age, 'tis as easy to find a bully without courage, as a whore without beauty, or a writer without wit; though those qualifications are so necessary in their respective professions. The mischief is, that you seldom allow any to rail besides yourselves, and cannot bear a pride which shocks your own.

Why, then, truly I think on no other way at present but blending the two into one; and, from this marriage of huffing and cringing, there will result a new kind of careless medley, which, perhaps, will work upon both sorts of readers, those who are to be hectored, and those whom we must creep to. At least, it is like to please by its novelty; and it will not be the first monster that has pleased you when regular nature could not do it.

Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere Sudoris minimum; sed habet commoedia tantum Plus oneris, quanto veniae minus.

If thou art one of those who, though they never write, criticise everyone that does; avaunt!—Thou art a professed enemy of mankind and of thyself, who wilt never be pleased nor let anybody be so, and knowest no better way to fame than by striving to lessen that of others;

If thou art one of those who would put themselves upon us for learned men in Greek and Hebrew, yet are mere blockheads in English, and patch together old pieces of the ancients to get themselves clothes out of them, thou art too severely mauled in this work to like it.

Laughing is of all professions; the miser may hoard, the spendthrift squander, the politician plot, the lawyer wrangle, and the gamester cheat; still their main design is to be able to laugh at one another; and here they may do it at a cheap and easy rate. After all, should this work fail to please the greater number of readers, I am sure it cannot miss being liked by those who are for witty mirth and a chirping bottle; though not by those solid sots who seem to have drudged all their youth long only that they might enjoy the sweet blessing of getting drunk every night in their old age. But those men of sense and honour who love truth and the good of mankind in general above all other things will undoubtedly countenance this work.

Now here men love to drink their wine pure; nay, sometimes it will not satisfy unless in its very quintessence, as in brandies; though an excess of this betrays want of sobriety, as much as an excess of wit betrays a want of judgment.

being asked by a patient of his, Shall I die? impudently made him this answer: Patroclus died, whom all allow By much a better man than you.

Iatros allon autos elkesi bruon.

Dog by his destiny was to take fox, and fox by his fate was not to be taken.

Now because, as Hesiod saith, A good beginning of anything is the half of it; or, Well begun's half done, according to the old saying;

the sentence of the Stoics, who say that there are three parts in a benefit, the one of the giver, the other of the receiver, the third of the remunerator;

they made answer that they feared nothing but the sky's falling;

Aeschylus was killed by the fall of the shell of a tortoise, which falling from betwixt the claws of an eagle high in the air, just on his head, dashed out his brains.

who by holding in his wind, and for want of letting out a bum-gunshot, died suddenly in the presence of the Emperor Claudius.

Philomenes, whose servant having got him some new figs for the first course of his dinner, whilst he went to fetch wine, a straggling well-hung ass got into the house, and seeing the figs on the table, without further invitation soberly fell to. Philomenes coming into the room and nicely observing with what gravity the ass ate its dinner, said to the man, who was come back, Since thou hast set figs here for this reverend guest of ours to eat, methinks it is but reason thou also give him some of this wine to drink. He had no sooner said this, but he was so excessively pleased, and fell into so exorbitant a fit of laughter, that the use of his spleen took that of his breath utterly away, and he immediately died.

Would to our dear Lord, and to our blessed, worthy, and sacred Lady, I were now, I say, this very minute of an hour, well on shore, on terra firma, hale and easy. O twice and thrice happy those that plant cabbages! O destinies, why did you not spin me for a cabbage-planter? O how few are there to whom Jupiter hath been so favourable as to predestinate them to plant cabbages! They have always one foot on the ground, and the other not far from it. Dispute who will of felicity and summum bonum, for my part whosoever plants cabbages is now, by my decree, proclaimed most happy; for as good a reason as the philosopher Pyrrho, being in the same danger, and seeing a hog near the shore eating some scattered oats, declared it happy in two respects; first, because it had plenty of oats, and besides that, was on shore. Ha, for a divine and princely habitation, commend me to the cows' floor.

Horrida tempestas montem turbavit acutum.

You may believe, my lord, I had my share of fear as well as Panurge; yet I spared no pains in lending my helping hand. I considered that, since by fatal and unavoidable necessity we must all die, it is the blessed will of God that we die this or that hour, and this or that kind of death. Nevertheless, we ought to implore, invoke, pray, beseech, and supplicate him; but we must not stop there; it behoveth us also to use our endeavours on our side, and, as the holy writ saith, to co-operate with him.

Dreadnought.

Adam—that is, man—was made to labour and work,

when somebody inquiring which is greater, the number of the living or that of the dead, he asked them amongst which of the two they reckoned those that are at sea, ingeniously implying that they are continually in danger of death, dying alive, and living die.

Portius Cato also said that there were but three things of which he would repent: if ever he had trusted his wife with his secret, if he had idled away a day, and if he had ever gone by sea to a place which he could visit by land.

Lombardic proverb, Passato el pericolo, gabbato el santo.

for procuring is the province of the old, as buttock-riggling is that of the young.

Chevalier de Langey,

Rabelais,

Atropos's scissors.

His toes were like a virginal on

The peritoneum, or caul wherein

an o...

his bowels were wrap...

a billiard...

old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan, described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job. It will swallow us all, ships and men, shag, rag, and bobtail, like a dose of pills.

the Scythians in that art, who sent once to Darius, King of Persia, an ambassador that made him a present of a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows, without speaking one word; and being asked what those presents meant, and if he had commission to say anything, answered that he had not; which puzzled and gravelled Darius very much, till Gobrias, one of the seven captains that had killed the magi, explained it, saying to Darius: By these gifts and offerings the Scythians silently tell you that except the Persians like birds fly up to heaven, or like mice hide themselves near the centre of the earth, or like frogs dive to the very bottom of ponds and lakes, they shall be destroyed by the power and arrows of the Scythians.

anatomical dissection of its body and save the fat of its kidneys, which, they said, was very useful and necessary for the cure of a certain distemper, which they called want of money.

I will swallow thee; but thou shalt only come in in chips and slices; for, big as thou art, thou couldst never come in whole. This spoke, he lugs out his trusty sword, Kiss-mine-arse (so he called it) with both his fists, and cut the Sausage in twain.

They all die of dropsies and tympanies, the men farting and the women fizzling; so that their soul takes her leave at the back-door.

thou hast choused me once, it is thy fault; chouse me twice, 'twill be mine.

I was going to tempt your fornicators, bailiffs, perplexers of causes, scriveners, forgers of deeds, two-handed counsellors, prevaricating solicitors, and other such vermin; but they were so civil as to send me word by an interpreter that they are all mine already.

Some say there is no breakfast like a student's, no dinner like a lawyer's, no afternoon's nunchion like a vine-dresser's, no supper like a tradesman's, no second supper like a serving-wench's, and none of these meals equal to a frockified hobgoblin's.

Nec toto decies cacas in anno, Atque id durius est faba, et lapillis: Quod tu si manibus teras, fricesque, Non unquam digitum inquinare posses.

Diogenes had seen him shoot extremely wide of it; so when the other was taking aim a second time, and the people removed at a great distance to the right and left of the white, he placed himself close by the mark, holding that place to be the safest, and that so bad an archer would certainly rather hit any other.

kiss his thumbs in the shape of a cross.

Orpheus.

Demosthenes