Miguel De Cervantes Quotes

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.

I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.

Let every man look before he leaps.

It is courage that vanquishes in war, and not good weapons.

The foolish sayings of the rich pass for wise saws in society.

I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice.

When in doubt, lean to the side of # mercy .

Blessed be he who invented sleep, a cloak that covers all a man's thoughts.

Let everyone turn himself around, and look at home, and he will find enough to do.

There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate.

Good Christians should never avenge injuries.

It is better that a judge should lean on the side of compassion than severity.

Virtue is the truest nobility.

Take away the motive, and you take away the sin.

Wine taken in moderation never does any harm.

The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.

God helps everyone with what is his own.

Delay always breeds danger.

Arms are my ornaments, warfare my repose.

Heaven's help is better than early rising.

There is a remedy for everything but death; who, in spite of our teeth, will take us in his clutches.

One of the effects of fear is to disturb the senses and cause things to appear other than what they are.

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.

Too much sanity may be madness.

The treason pleases, but the traitors are odious.

Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.

Sing away sorrow, cast away care.

Riches are of little avail in many of the calamities to which mankind are liable.

The pen is the tongue of the soul; as are the thoughts engendered there, so will be the things written.

Let the worst come to the worst.

Cunning cheats itself wholly, and other people partially.

Laws that only threaten, and are not kept, become like the log that was given to the frogs to be their king, which they feared at first, but soon scorned and trampled on.

He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals.

When a man says, "Get out of my house! what would you have with my wife?" there is no answer to be made.

Get out of harms way.

Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it goes ill with the pitcher.

There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.

Those two fatal words, Mine and Thine.

Is it possible your pragmatical worship should not know that the comparisons made between wit and wit, courage and courage, beauty and beauty, birth and birth, are always odious and ill taken?.

For the army is a school in which the miser becomes generous, and the generous prodigal; miserly soldiers are like monsters, but very rarely seen.

It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued.

They who lose today may win tomorrow.

It requires a long time to know anyone.

Urgent necessity prompts many to do things.

They must needs go whom the Devil drives.

But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.

Evil comes not amiss if it comes alone.

Men of great talents, whether poets or historians, seldom escape the attacks of those who, without ever favoring the world with any production of their own, take delight in criticising the works of others.

We are all as God made us and frequently much worse.

Soul of fibre and heart of oak.

"He preaches well that lives well," quoth Sancho, "that's all the divinity I can understand."

Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.

Whoever is ignorant is vulgar.

It is impossible for good or evil to last forever; and hence it follows that the evil having lasted so long, the good must be now nigh at hand.

"From what I have seen here," remarked Sancho, "justice is so good a thing that even robbers find it necessary."

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.

God who gives the wound gives the salve.

He preaches well that lives well.

A man prepared has half fought the battle.

Tis a dainty thing to command, though twere but a flock of sheep.

Good wits jump; a word to the wise is enough.

Poesy is a beauteous damsel, chaste, honourable, discreet, witty, retired, and who keeps herself within the limits of propriety. She is a friend of solitude; fountains entertain her, meadows console her, woods free her from ennui, flowers delight her; in short, she gives pleasure and instruction to all with whom she communicates.

Be not under the dominion of thine own will; it is the vice of the ignorant, who vainly presume on their own understanding.

I can tell where my own shoe pinches me.

Be brief, for no talk can please when too long. Being prepared is half the victory.

The virtuous woman must be treated like a relic - adored, but not handled; she should be guarded and prized, like a fine flower-garden, the beauty and fragrance of which the owner allows others to enjoy only at a distance, and through iron walls.

Great persons are able to do great kindnesses.

By the streets of 'by and by,' one arrives at the house of 'never'.

It will be seen in the frying of the eggs.

It is good to live and learn.

To be prepared is half the victory.

For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.

Leap out of the frying pan into the fire.

A knight errant who turns mad for a reason deserves neither merit nor thanks. The thing is to do it without cause

When we leave this world, and are laid in the earth, the prince walks as narrow a path as the day-laborer.

Historians ought to be precise, faithful, and unprejudiced; and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should make them swerve from the way of truth.

When one door is shut, another opens.

You are a devil at everything, and there is no kind of thing in the 'versal world but what you can turn your hand into.

Tis an old saying, the Devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glitters. From the tail of the plough, Bamba was made King of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes.

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.

Tis the only comfort of the miserable to have partners in their woes.

I know well enough that there have been dogs so loving that they have thrown themselves into the same grave with the dead bodies of their masters; others have stayed upon their masters' graves without stirring a moment from them, and have voluntarily starved themselves to death, refusing to touch the food that was brought them.

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large, of dwarfs giants, of suspicions truths.

Bien predica quien bien vive.
He who lives well is the best preacher.

Once a woman parts with her virtue, she loses the esteem even of the man whose vows and tears won her to abandon it.

The ass bears the load, but not the overload.

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.

The worst reconciliation is better than the best divorce.

Well, now there's a remedy for everything except death.

Whom God loves, his house is sweet to him.

Other men's pains are easily borne.

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.

My memory is so bad that many times I forget my own name.

The good governor should have a broken leg and keep at home.

My thoughts ran a wool-gathering.

Let us forget and forgive injuries.

Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy.