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

— François Rabelais Pantagruel (1532)

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Source and credibility

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Source: Pantagruel (1532), Book III, Chapter XXVII.
Work: Pantagruel, 1532
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Do not believe what I tell you here any more than if it were some tale of a tub.

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

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You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled.

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Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.

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He always looked a given horse in the mouth.

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Spare your breath to cool your porridge.

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All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure.

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Topics

Perseverance

More quotes by François Rabelais

Patience, if it were our sovereign lady's will, we would be as tall as you; well, we shall when she pleases.

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Here enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true
Expounders of the Scriptures old and new.

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Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.

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Looking as like...as one pea does like another.

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We will take the good-will for the deed.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: François Rabelais (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.