Quotes by Miguel Cervantes
- I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea.
- The eyes those silent tongues of love.
- Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.
- There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.
- There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.
- 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 are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots.
- The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.
- Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched.
- The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.
- Thou hast seen nothing yet.
- The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.
- That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.
- That which costs little is less valued.
- Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.
- Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.
- Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.
- Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.
- The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.
- True valor lies between cowardice and rashness.
- When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.
- When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
- Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.
- Virtue is the truest nobility.
- 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.
- Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.
- There's no taking trout with dry breeches.
- 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.
- Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
- To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.
- To be prepared is half the victory.
- Tis the only comfort of the miserable to have partners in their woes.
- 'Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.
- Tis a dainty thing to command, though twere but a flock of sheep.
- Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
- A closed mouth catches no flies.
- Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.
- God bears with the wicked, but not forever.
- From reading too much, and sleeping too little, his brain dried up on him and he lost his judgment.
- Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.
- 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.
- Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.
- Fair and softly goes far.
- Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.
- Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.
- A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
- Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.
- Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
- 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.
- Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.
- A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.
- One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.
- Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.
- Every man is the son of his own works.
- Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.
- He had a face like a blessing.
- A person dishonored is worst than dead.
- No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.
- No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden better than her own reserve.
- Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.
- Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
- Man appoints, and God disappoints.
- Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.
- Jests that give pains are no jests.
- It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.
- It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.
- In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.
- 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.
- 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.
- He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.
- He preaches well that lives well.
- Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.