Skip to content

Always open all gates and roads to your enemies, and rather make for them a bridge of silver, to get rid of them.

— François Rabelais

Ouvrez toujours à vos ennemis toutes les portes et chemin, et plutot leur faites un pont d'argent, afin de les renvoyer.

Original text (French)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Gargantua, Book I, Chapter XLIII. Count de Pitillan, according to Gilles Corrozet—Les Divers Propos Memorables (1571) uses the same phrase… Read in full
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by François Rabelais

In all companies there are more fools than wise men, and the greater part always gets the better of the wiser.

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

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

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

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

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

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

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

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

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

He always looked a given horse in the mouth.

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

Spare your breath to cool your porridge.

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

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

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

All François Rabelais quotes →

Source, in full

Gargantua, Book I, Chapter XLIII. Count de Pitillan, according to Gilles Corrozet—Les Divers Propos Memorables (1571) uses the same phrase with "golden" bridge for "silver." The same suggestion was made by Aristides, referring to the proposal to destroy Xerxes' bridge of ships over the Hellespont. ("A bridge for a retreating army.") See Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes. Louis II, Brantome, Memoirs, Volume I, II, p. 83. Also French translation. of Thomasi, Life of Cæsar Borgia, p. 64.

Topics

War

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.

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

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

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

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

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

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

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

We will take the good-will for the deed.

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

All François Rabelais quotes →

You may also like

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now.

Hunter S. Thompson

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

George Santayana Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

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.