Miguel de Cervantes Quotations

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

That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.

From reading too much, and sleeping too little, his brain dried up on him and he lost his judgment.

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

Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.

Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.

He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.

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.

Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.

Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.

Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched.

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.

It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

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

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.

The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.

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

The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.

God bears with the wicked, but not forever.

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.

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.

Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.

To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.

Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.

Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.

There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots.

Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable

Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.

Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea.

When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.

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.

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.

Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.

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

Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.

Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.

Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.

Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

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

Every man is the son of his own works.

No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden better than her own reserve.

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.

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.

Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.

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

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

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.

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

Though God's attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.

By the street of by-and-by, one arrives at the house of never.

The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the son of his own works.

The eyes those silent tongues of love.

Get the better of yourself - this is the best kind of victory.

In every case, the remedy is to take action. Get clear about exactly what it is that you need to learn and exactly what you need to do to learn it. BEING CLEAR KILLS FEAR. Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.

Many go out for wool, and come home shorn themselves.

There is remedy for all things except death - Don Quixote De La Mancha

What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?

I'll turn over a new leaf.

The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.

A closed mouth catches no flies.

Great persons are able to do great kindnesses.

All sorrows are less with bread.

Three things too much, and three too little are pernicious to man; to speak much, and know little; to spend much, and have little; to presume much, and be worth little.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

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

Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.

Thou hast seen nothing yet.

He who gives early gives twice.

Patience and shuffle the cards.

Delay always breeds danger.

A Man Without Honor is Worse than Dead.

'Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it....

The wounds received in battle bestow honor, they do not take it away...

You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch in his throne.

A tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond.

I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.

The wicked are always ungrateful.

There's no love lost between us.

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

Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.

By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.

The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.

There is no book so bad...that it does not have something good in it.

Urgent necessity prompts many to do things.

Make yourself honey and the flies will devour you.

Think before thou speakest.

When God sends the dawn, he sends it for all.