Cervantes Quotes

I do not insist," answered Don Quixote, "that this is a full adventure, but it is the beginning of one, for this is the way adventures begin. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Gaby wasn't having much luck with cats lately. The stray from yesterday had left her with red welts and a bad dream, and Lemon had just tried to eat her hair. ~ Angela Cervantes

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

Leap out of the frying pan into the fire. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Folly is wont to have more followers and comrades than discretion. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

The foolish sayings of the rich pass for wise saws in society. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest. ~ Jean Douchet

Where envy reigns virtue can't exist, and generosity doesn't go with meanness. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Senor, a large river separated two districts of one and the same lordship - will your worship please to pay attention, for the case is an important and a rather knotty one? Well then, on this river there was a bridge, and at one end of it a gallows, and a sort of tribunal, where four judges commonly sat to administer the law which the lord of river, bridge and the lordship had enacted, and which was to this effect, 'If anyone crosses by this bridge from one side to the other he shall declare on oath where he is going to and with what object; and if he swears truly, he shall be allowed to pass, but if falsely, he shall be put to death for it by hanging on the gallows erected there, without any remission.' Though the law and its severe penalty were known, many persons crossed, but in their declarations it was easy to see at once they were telling the truth, and the judges let them pass free. It happened, however, that one man, when they came to take his declaration, swore and said that by the oath he took he was going to die upon that gallows that stood there, and nothing else. The judges held a consultation over the oath, and they said, 'If we let this man pass free he has sworn falsely, and by the law he ought to die; but if we hang him, as he swore he was going to die on that gallows, and therefore swore the truth, by the same law he ought to go free.' It is asked of your worship, senor governor, what are the judges to do with this man? For they are still in doubt and perple ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

And the first thing I have got to say is, that for my own part I hold my master Don Quixote to be stark mad, though sometimes he says things that, to my mind, and indeed everybody's that listens to him, are so wise, and run in such a straight furrow, that Satan himself could not have said them better; but for all that, really, and beyond all question, it's my firm belief he is cracked. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Whoever is ignorant is vulgar. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Whoever undertakes a long journey, if he be wise, makes it his business to find out an agreeable companion. How cautious then should he be, who is to take a journey for life, whose fellow-traveler must not part with him but at the grave; his companion at bed and board and sharer of all the pleasures and fatigues of his journey, as the wife must be to the husband! She is no such sort of ware, that a man can be rid of when he pleases: when once that is purchased, no exchange, no sale, no alienation can be made. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

The village to sell (saving your presence) four pigs, and between dues and cribbings they got out of me little less than the worth of them. As ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

the best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive [for one and all] to learn Spanish. ~ Aubrey F.G. Bell

The poor gentleman has no way of showing that he is a gentleman but by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered, and kindly, not haughty, arrogant, or censorious, but above all by being charitable; for by two maravedis given with a cheerful heart to the poor, he will show himself as generous as he who distributes alms with bell-ringing, and no one that perceives him to be endowed with the virtues I have named, even though he know him not, will fail to recognise and set him down as one of good blood; and it would be strange were it not so; praise has ever been the reward of virtue, and those who are virtuous cannot fail to receive commendation. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

There are but few proverbial sayings that are not true, for they are all drawn from experience itself, which is the mother of all sciences. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

A knowledge of thyself will preserve thee from vanity. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

A king's crumb is worth more than a lord's loaf." 'This ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Though Gods attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

At this point they came in sight of thirty forty windmills that there are on plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, "Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth." "What giants?" said Sancho Panza. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

After the gratifications of brutish appetites are past, the greatest pleasure then is to get rid of that which entertained it. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

In short, virtue cannot live where envy reigns, nor liberality subsist with niggardliness. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

In short, to sum up all in a few words, or in a single one, I may tell you I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called 'The Knight of the Rueful Countenance;' for though self-praise is degrading, I must perforce sound my own sometimes, that is to say, when there is no one at hand to do it for me. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Many people go looking for wool and come back shorn. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

He who sings frightens away his ills. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Can there be hope where fear is? Were it well,
When far more certain are the grounds of fear?
Ought I to shut mine eyes to jealousy,
If through a thousand heart-wounds it appears? ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Also saw that the number of simpleminded men is greater than that of the prudent, and though it is better to be praised by a few wise men and mocked by many fools, ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The road to the inn is much better than the stay. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

This is a fault incident to all those who presume to translate books of verse into another language. For, however much care they take and however much ability they employ, they can never equal the quality of the original. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The beauty of some women has days and seasons, depending upon accidents which diminish or increase it; nay, the very passions of the mind naturally improve or impair it, and very often utterly destroy it. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

When one door is shut, another opens. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

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

When we are asleep, we are all equal. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Scholarship without virtue is like pearls pearls ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it goes ill with the pitcher. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

The praise of the wise few is more important than the mockery of the foolish many, ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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

How is it possible that things so trivial and so easy to remedy can have the power to perplex and absorb an intelligence as mature as yours, and one so ready to demolish and pass over much greater difficulties? ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

We ought to love our Maker for His own sake, without either hope of good or fear of pain. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Ye love-smitten host, know that to Dulcinea only I am dough and sugar-paste, flint to all others; for her I am honey, for you aloes. For ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Thou knowest that my voice is sweet, That is if thou dost hear; And I am moulded in a form Somewhat below the mean. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Fear has many eyes and can see things underground. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Great hearts, my dear master, should be patient in misfortune as well as joyful in prosperity. And this I judge from myself. For if I was merry when I was Governor now that I'm a squire on foot I'm not sad, for I've heard tell that Fortune, as they call her, is a drunken and capricious woman and, worse still, blind; and so she doesn't see what she's doing, and doesn't know whom she is casting down or raising up. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

He is most blessed who loves the most, the freest who is most enslaved by love, ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The slight, the facile and the merely self-glorifying tend to drop away over the centuries, and what we are left with is the bedrock: Homer and Milton, the Greek tragedian and Shakespeare, Chaucer and Cervantes and Swift, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and James and Conrad. Time does not make their voices fainter, on the contrary, it reinforces our sense of their truth-telling capacity. ~ Wendy Lesser

Lovers are commonly industrious to make themselves uneasy. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

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

If all, or almost all, the plays that are popular now, imaginative works as well as historical ones, are known to be nonsense and without rhyme or reason, and despite this the mob hears them with pleasure and thinks of them and approves of them as good, when they are very far from being so, and the authors who compose them and the actors who perform them say they must be like this because that is just how the mob wants them, and no other way; the plays that have a design and follow the story as art demands appeal to a handful of discerning persons who understand them, while everyone else is incapable of comprehending their artistry; and since, as far as the authors and actors are concerned, it is better to earn a living with the crowd than a reputation with the elite, this is what would happen to my book after I had singed my eyebrows trying to keep the precepts I have mentioned and had become the tailor who wasn't paid. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

At the emergence of the modern novel with Rabelais and Cervantes, all kinds of things were possible in a long-form prose work. Within a couple of hundred years, most of those possibilities were abandoned in favor of a text that efficiently transmitted sentiments. ~ Teju Cole

Wit and humor do not reside in slow minds. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The wounds received in battle bestow honor, they do not take it away ... ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Until death it is all life ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Secondly, thou must keep in view what thou art, striving to know thyself, the ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Too much sanity may be madness. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Pray look better, Sir ... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Heaven's help is better than early rising. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

History is the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instructor of the present, and monitor to the future. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Although this is poetic fiction, it contains hidden moral truths worthy of being heeded and understood and imitated, ... ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The little birds have God for their caterer. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

I swear to hold my tongue about it till the end of your worship's days, and God grant I may be able to let it out tomorrow ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Believe there are no limits but the sky. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Lifting up his hand to her, he said, Here, madam, take the hand, or rather, as I may say, the executioner of all earthy miscreants-take, I say, that hand which never woman touched before; no, not even she herself who has entire possession of my whole body; nor do I hold it up to you that you may kiss it, but that you may observe the contexture of the sinews, the ligament of the muscles, and the largeness and dilation of the veins; whence you may conclude how strong that arm must be to which such a hand is joined. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

As ill-luck would have it. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Every man is the child of his own deeds ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

One swallow alone does not make a summer. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Since then the romances of chivalry had been superseded by the flowering of literature that we know as the Spanish Golden Age, and by Cervantes's time nobody considered them to be a threat any more. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

But one of shallow wit, somewhat like a saltshaker with very little salt. In ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

He who's down one day can be up the next, unless he really wants to stay in bed, that is ... ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Seated on his horse, resting in his stirrups and leaning on the end of his lance, filled with sad and troubled forebodings; ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Arms are my ornaments, warfare my repose. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

To dream the impossible dream, that is my quest. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

It seems to me a hard case to make slaves of those whom God and nature have made free. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

By the streets of 'by and by,' one arrives at the house of 'never'. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

He'd just fallen off a rock and got a little bit spifflicated in the ribs. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The book depicts thoughts, unveils imaginings, answers unspoken questions, clarifies doubts, resolves arguments, and finally reveals the very atoms of the most curiosity-driven desire. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

There is no love lost between us. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

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

It is never my custom to plunder those I over come. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Whether it's the pot that hits the rock or the rock that hits the pot , it's the pot that will break every time ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Cervantes told me history is the mother of truth.
Borges told me historical truth is not what took place; it is what we think took place.
So Billy Shakespeare was queer.
Ronnie was the greatest president in history, right up there on Mount Rushmore.
AIDS is mankind's greatest plague.
Israel only kills terrorists.
America never bombed Lebanon.
Jesus was straight. Juda and he were just friends.
Roseanne's parents molested her as an infant.
Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat deserved their Nobels.
And Gaetan Dugas started the AIDS epidemic. ~ Rabih Alameddine

In the worst of circumstances, the hypocrite who pretends to be good does less harm than the public sinner. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

There is no book so bad ... that it does not have something good in it. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Nay, what is even worse, he may become a poet, which they say is an incurable and infectious disease." "This ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I am not in the habit', said Don Quixote, 'of despoiling those whom I vanquish, nor is it a custom of chivalry to take their horses and leave them on foot, unless the victor has lost his own horse in the fray, in which case it is legitimate to take the defeated knight's horse, as a prize won in lawful war. And so, Sancho, leave that horse, or donkey, or whatever you want to call it, for as soon as its master sees that we have gone he will return for it.'
God knows I'd love to take it', replied Sancho, 'or at least swap it for mine, because I don't think mine's such a good one. These laws of chivalry are really strict, if they won't even stretch to letting you swap one donkey for another - could you please tell me if I can at least swap the tackle?'
I am not very clear about that', replied Don Quixote, 'and as it is a doubtful case, I should say that until I am better informed you can swap it, if your need is very great.'
It's so great', said Sancho, 'that if I'd wanted the tackle to wear it myself I couldn't have needed it more.'
And, now that he'd been granted official permission, he performed his mutatio capparum and refurbished his donkey. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The reason of the unreasonableness which against my reason is wrought, doth so weaken my reason, as with all reason I do justly complain on your beauty. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

And many folks think there's bacon when there's not even a hook to hang it on. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail. ~ Lord Byron

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

But our depraved age does not deserve to enjoy such a blessing as those ages enjoyed when knights-errant took upon their shoulders the defence of kingdoms, the protection of damsels, the succour of orphans and minors, the chastisement of the proud, and the recompense of the humble. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

With these meager scraps of Latin and the like, you may perhaps be taken for a scholar, which is honorable and profitable these days. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Wine taken in moderation never does any harm. ~ Miguel De Cervantes