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Quotes of Miguel De Cervantes
Don Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (eptember 29, 1547 – April 23, 1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. Cervantes was one of the most important and influential persons in literature and the leading figure associated with the cultural flourishing of sixteenth century Spain (the Siglo de Oro). His novel, Don Quixote, is considered as a Spanish founding classic of Western literature and regularly figures among the best novels ever written; it has been translated into more than sixty-five languages, while editions continue regularly to be printed, and critical discussion of the work has persisted unabated since the 18th century. His work is considereted one of the most important work in the universal literature. He has been dubbed el Príncipe de los Ingenios (the Prince of Wits).
- A closed mouth catches no flies.
- A person dishonored is worst than dead.
- A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.
- A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
- Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.
- Be a terror to the butchers, that they may be fair in their weight; and keep hucksters and fraudulent dealers in awe, for the same reason.
- Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
- Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.
- Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.
- Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
- Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.
- Every man is the son of his own works.
- Fair and softly goes far.
- Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.
- For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences.
- For if he like a madman lived, At least he like a wise one died.
- Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.
- From reading too much, and sleeping too little, his brain dried up on him and he lost his judgment.
- God bears with the wicked, but not forever.
- Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.
- Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.
- He had a face like a blessing.
- He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals.
- He preaches well that lives well.
- He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.
- Hold you there, neither a strange hand nor my own, neither heavy nor light shall touch my bum.
- I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.
- I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar.
- I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea.
- In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.
- It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.
- It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.
- Jests that give pains are no jests.
- Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.
- Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.
- Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.
- Man appoints, and God disappoints.
- Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
- Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.
- No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.
- No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden better than her own reserve.
- One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.
- One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.
- Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.
- Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.
- Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.
- Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.
- Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills.
- Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.
- That which costs little is less valued.
- That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.
- The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.
- The eyes those silent tongues of love.
- The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.
- The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.
- The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.
- There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots.
- There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or at least alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.
- There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.
- There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.
- There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.
- There's no taking trout with dry breeches.
- Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched.
- Thou hast seen nothing yet.
- Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
- Tis a dainty thing to command, though twere but a flock of sheep.
- 'Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.
- Tis the only comfort of the miserable to have partners in their woes.
- To be prepared is half the victory.
- To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.
- Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
- True valor lies between cowardice and rashness.
- Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.
- Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.
- Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.
- Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.
- Virtue is the truest nobility.
- Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.
- When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
- When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.