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Quotes by Miguel de Cervantes

A person dishonored is worst than dead.
– Miguel de Cervantes
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
– Miguel de Cervantes
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.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Every man is the son of his own works.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Fair and softly goes far.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.
– Miguel de Cervantes
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.
– Miguel de Cervantes
For if he like a madman lived, At least he like a wise one died.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.
– Miguel de Cervantes
From reading too much, and sleeping too little, his brain dried up on him and he lost his judgment.
– Miguel de Cervantes
God bears with the wicked, but not forever.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.
– Miguel de Cervantes
He had a face like a blessing.
– Miguel de Cervantes
He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals.
– Miguel de Cervantes
He preaches well that lives well.
– Miguel de Cervantes
He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Hold you there, neither a strange hand nor my own, neither heavy nor light shall touch my bum.
– Miguel de Cervantes
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.
– Miguel de Cervantes
If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.
– Miguel de Cervantes
In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.
– Miguel de Cervantes
It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.
– Miguel de Cervantes
It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Jests that give pains are no jests.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.
– Miguel de Cervantes
No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.
– Miguel de Cervantes
No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden better than her own reserve.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Nor has his death the world deceiv'd than his wondrous life surprise d; if he like a madman liv'd least he like a wise one dy'd.
– Miguel de Cervantes
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.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.
– Miguel de Cervantes
That which costs little is less valued.
– Miguel de Cervantes
That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.
– Miguel de Cervantes
The eyes those silent tongues of love.
– Miguel de Cervantes
The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.
– Miguel de Cervantes
The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.
– Miguel de Cervantes
The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.
– Miguel de Cervantes
There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots.
– Miguel de Cervantes
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.
– Miguel de Cervantes
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.
– Miguel de Cervantes
There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.
– Miguel de Cervantes
There's no taking trout with dry breeches.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Thou hast seen nothing yet.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
– Miguel de Cervantes
'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.
– Miguel de Cervantes
'Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
– Miguel de Cervantes
True valor lies between cowardice and rashness.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.
– Miguel de Cervantes
When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
– Miguel de Cervantes
When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Be brief, for no discourse can please when too long.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse.
– Miguel de Cervantes
I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.
– Miguel de Cervantes
To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.
– Miguel de Cervantes
There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.
– Miguel de Cervantes