Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra Quotes & Sayings

At this the duchess, laughing all the while, said: Sancho Panza is right in all he has said, and will be right in all he shall say ... — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The landlord replied he had no chickens, for the kites had stolen them. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

All the world stand, unless all the world confess that in all the world there is no maiden fairer than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

But once more I say do as you please, for we women are born to this burden of being obedient to our husbands, though they be blockheads — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

What intelligent things you say sometimes ! One would think you had studied. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Faint heart never won fair maiden — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Hunger is the best sauce in the world. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Never mind what some will say, for then thou wilt never have done. One may as soon tie up the winds, as the tongues of slanderers. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

If, for my sins, or by my good fortune, I come across some giant hereabouts, a common occurrence with knights-errant, and overthrow him in one onslaught, or cleave him asunder to the waist, or, in short, vanquish and subdue him, will it not be well to have some one I may send him to as a present, that he may come in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in a humble, submissive voice say, 'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commanded me to present myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of me at your pleasure'? — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Heaven send us better times! There is nothing but plotting and counter-plotting, undermining and counter-mining in this world. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

A girl who seemed about sixteen years old, dressed in travelling clothes, and so marvellously beautiful and graceful that everyone was dazzled by the sight of her and, if they hadn't seen Dorotea, Luscinda and Zoraida at the inn, they'd have believed it next to impossible to find another comparable beauty. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

That which costs little is less valued. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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

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

All human efforts to communicate - even in the same language - are equally utopian, equally luminous with value, and equally worth the doing. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

All I know is that while I'm asleep, I'm never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories - and bless the man who invented sleep, a cloak over all human thought, food that drives away hunger, water that banishes thirst, fire that heats up cold, chill that moderates passion, and, finally, universal currency with which all things can be bought, weight and balance that brings the shepherd and the king, the fool and the wise, to the same level. There's only one bad thing about sleep, as far as I've ever heard, and that is that it resembles death, since there's very little difference between a sleeping man and a corpse. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

[reading a work in translation] is like viewing a piece of Flemish tapestry on the wrong side. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Ah, but Senor!" exclaimed the niece, "your Grace should send them to be burned along with the rest; for I shouldn't wonder at all if my uncle, after he has been cured off this chivalry sickness, reading one of these books, should take it into his head to become a shepherd and go wandering through the woods and meadows singing and piping, or, what is worse, become a poet, which they say is an incurable disease and one that is very catching. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

He who clipped us has kept the scissors. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Everything I have done, am doing, and shall do follows the dictates of reason and the laws of chivalry, — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Since Cervantes's magnificent Knight's quest has cosmological scope and reverberation, no object seems beyond reach. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Face, I cannot bear with patience some of the things your Grace says. They are enough to make me suspect that all you have told me about knighthood and winning kingdoms and empires, of bestowing islands and giving me other favors and honors according to the customs of chivalry must all be hot air and lies, and all a cock and bull story or cock and ball story or whatsoever you term it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch on his throne. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The journey is better than the inn". — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

He got himself dressed at last, and then, slowly, for he was
sorely bruised and could not go fast, he proceeded to the stable,
followed by all who were present, and going up to Dapple embraced
him and gave him a loving kiss on the forehead, and said to him, not
without tears in his eyes, "Come along, comrade and friend and partner
of my toils and sorrows; when I was with you and had no cares to
trouble me except mending your harness and feeding your little
carcass, happy were my hours, my days, and my years; but since I
left you, and mounted the towers of ambition and pride, a thousand
miseries, a thousand troubles, and four thousand anxieties have
entered into my soul; — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

It is the privilege and charm of beauty to win the heart and secure good-will, — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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

They must take me for a fool, or even worse, a lunatic. And no wonder ,for I am so intensely conscious of my misfortune and my misery is so overwhelming that I am powerless to resist it and am being turned into stone, devoid of all knowledge or feeling. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

All kinds of beauty do not inspire love; there is a kind which only pleases the sight, but does not captivate the affections. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I would do what I pleased, and doing what I pleased, I should have my will, and having my will, I should be contented; and when one is contented, there is no more to be desired; and when there is no more to be desired, there is an end of it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I don't say it and I don't think it. It's their affair and let them eat it with their bread; whether or not they were lovers, they've already made their accounting with God. I tend to my vines, it's their business, not mine; I don't stick my nose in; if you buy and lie, your purse wants to know why. Besides, naked I was born, and naked I'll die: I don't lose or gain a thing; whatever they were, it's all the same to me. And many folks think there's bacon when there's not even a hook to hang it on. But who can put doors on a field? Let them say what they please, I don't care. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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

Didn't i tell you they were only windmills? And someone with windmills on the brain could have failed to see that! — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

By the one God, Sancho, no more proverbs. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

By God and upon my conscience", said the devil, "I never observed it, for my mind is occupied with so many different things that I was forgetting the main thing I came about." "This demon must be an honest fellow and a good Christian," said Sancho; "for if he wasn't he wouldn't swear by God and his conscience; I feel sure now there must be good souls even in hell itself. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

We know already ample experience that it does not require much cleverness or much learning to be a governor, for there are a hundred round about us that scarcely know how to read. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Poetry, gentle sir, is, as I take it, like a tender young maiden of supreme beauty, to array, bedeck, and adorn whom is the task of several other maidens, — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

That is the nature of women," said Don Quixote. "They reject the man who loves them and love the man who despises them. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Perceived a cart covered with royal flags coming along the road they were travelling; and persuaded that this must be some new adventure, — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

What I can tell your grace is that it deals with truths, and they are truths so appealing and elegant that no lies can equal them. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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

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

Trying to stop slanderers' tongues is like trying to put gates to the open plain. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

What I wish to tell you now you must swear to keep secret until after my death." "I swear," Sancho responded. "I say this," replied Don Quixote, "because I do not wish to take away anyone's honor." "I say that I swear," Sancho said again, "to keep quiet about it until your grace has reached the end of your days, and God willing, I'll be able to reveal it tomorrow. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Vagabond knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called 'The Knight of the Rueful Countenance. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

A good joke, that!" returned Don Quixote. "Books that have been printed with the king's licence, and with the approbation of those to whom they have been submitted, and read with universal delight, and extolled by great and small, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, gentle and simple, in a word by people of every sort, of whatever rank or condition they may be - that these should be lies! — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

And remember, my son, that it is better for the soldier to smell of gunpowder than of civet, and that if old age should come upon you in this honourable calling, though you may be covered with wounds and crippled and lame, it will not come upon you without honour, and that such as poverty cannot lessen; especially now that provisions are being made for supporting and relieving old and disabled soldiers; for it is not right to deal with them after the fashion of those who set free and get rid of their black slaves when they are old and useless, and, turning them out of their houses under the pretence of making them free, make them slaves to hunger, from which they cannot expect to be released except by death. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Friend to friend no more draws near, and the jester's cane has become a spear — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Love, as I have heard say, sometimes flies and sometimes walks; with this one it runs, with that it moves slowly; some it cools, others it burns; some it wounds, others it slays; it begins in the course of its desires, and at the same moment completes and end it; in the morning it will lay siege to a fortress and by night will have taken it, for there is no power than can resist it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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

There is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain which death does not remove. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Oh Senor" said the niece. "Your grace should send them to be burned (books), just like all the rest, because it's very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

But my thoughts ran a wool-gathering; and I did like the countryman, who looked for his ass while he was mounted on his back. Don Quixote (pt. II, ch. LVII) — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

In any case, Cide Hamete Benengeli was a very careful historian, and very accurate in all things, as can be clearly seen in the details he relates to us, for although they are trivial and inconsequential, he does not attempt to pass over them in silence; his example could be followed by solemn historians who recount actions so briefly and succinctly that we can barely taste them, and leave behind in the inkwell, through carelessness, malice, or ignorance, the most substantive part of the work. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Consider, that no jewel upon earth is comparable to a woman of virtue and honor; and, that the honor of the sex consists in the fair characters they maintain. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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

Until death it is all life — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

time has more power to undo and change things than the human will. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Love is influenced by no consideration, recognizes no restraints of reason, and is of the same nature as death, that assails alike the lofty palaces of kings and the humble cabins of shepherds; and when it takes entire possession of a heart, the first thing it does is to banish fear and shame from it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The ability to reason the un-reason which has afflicted by reason saps my ability to reason, so that I complain with good reason of your infinite loveliness. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The eyes those silent tongues of love. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I have always heard it said, Sancho, that to do good to boors is to throw water into the sea. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

He tried his luck again, and things went so smoothly that with no more noise or disturbance than the last time, he found himself rid of the burden that had caused him so much grief. But since Don Quixote had a sense of smell as acute as his hearing, and Sancho was joined so closely to him, and the vapors rose up almost in a straight line, some unavoidably reached his nostrils, and as soon as they did he came to the assistance of his nostrils and squeezed them closed between two fingers, and in a somewhat nasal voice, he said: It seems to me, Sancho, that you are very frightened. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I don't see what my arse has to do with enchantings! — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

All you have to do is try, with meaningful words, properly and effectively arranged, to honestly unroll your sentences and paragraphs, clearly, sensibly, just explaining what you're up to as well and as powerfully as you can. Let your ideas be understood without making them complicated or obscure. And see, too, if your pages can make sad men laugh as they read, and make smiling men even happier; try to keep simple men untroubled, and wise men impressed by your imagination, and sober men not contemptuous, nor careful men reluctant, to praise it. — 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

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

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

They were puffing at him with a great pair of bellows; for the whole adventure was so well planned by the duke, the duchess, and their majordomo, that nothing was omitted to make it perfectly successful. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Whether thus adorned she would have been beautiful or not, and what she must have been in her prosperity, may be imagined from the beauty remaining to her after so many hardships; for, as everyone knows, the beauty of some women has its times and its seasons, and is increased or diminished by chance causes; and naturally the emotions of the mind will heighten or impair it, though indeed more frequently they totally destroy it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

He did not think about any promises his master had made to him, and he did not consider it work but sheer pleasure to go around seeking adventures, no matter how dangerous they might be. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I was born like everyone else, and a man must not live in dependence on anyone except God; — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

For it is the business and duty of historians to be exact, truthful, and wholly free from passion, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and warning for the future. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

But what made him still more fortunate, as he said himself, was having a daughter of such exceeding beauty, rare intelligence, gracefulness, and virtue, that everyone who knew her and beheld her marvelled at the extraordinary gifts with which heaven and nature had endowed her. As a child she was beautiful, she continued to grow in beauty, and at the age of sixteen she was most lovely. The fame of her beauty began to spread abroad through all the villages around - but why do I say the villages around, merely, when it spread to distant cities, and even made its way into the halls of royalty and reached the ears of people of every class, who came from all sides to see her as if to see something rare and curious, or some wonder-working image? — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I betook myself to these solitudes, resolved to end here the life I hated as if it were my mortal enemy. But fate would not rid me of it, contenting itself with robbing me of my reason, — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The pen is the language of the soul; as the concepts that in it are generated, such will be its writings. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Path of knight-errantry, and in pursuit of that calling I despise wealth, but not honour. I — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Plunge, scoundrel, rogue, monster - for such I take thee to be - plunge, I say, into the mare magnum of their histories; and if thou shalt find that any squire ever said or thought what thou hast said now, I will let thee nail it on my forehead, and give me, over and above, four sound slaps in the face. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Having cleaned his armor and made a full helmet out of a simple headpiece, and having given a name to his horse and decided on one for himself, he realized that the only thing left for him to do was to find a lady to love; for the knight errant without a lady-love was a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

All I know is that so long I am asleep I am rid of all fears and hopes and toils and glory, and long live the man who invented sleep, the cloak that covers all human thirst. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Let's turn now to the citation of authors, found in other books and missing in yours. The solution to this is very simple, because all you have to do is find a book that cites them all from A to Z, as you put it. Then you'll put that same alphabet in your book, and though the lie is obvious it doesn't matter, since you'll have little need to use them; perhaps someone will be naive enough to believe you have consulted all of them in your plain and simple history; if it serves no other purpose, at least a lengthy catalogue of authors will give the book an unexpected authority. Furthermore, no one will try to determine if you followed them or did not follow them, having nothing to gain from that. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

O Don Quixote, wise as thou art brave,
La Mancha's splendor and of Spain the star!
To thee I say that if the peerless maid,
Dulcinea del Toboso, is to be restored
to the state that was once hers, it needs must be
that thy squire Sancho take on his bared behind,
those sturdy buttocks, must consent to take
three thousand lashes and three hundred more,
and well laid on, that they may sting and smart;
for those are the authors of her woe
have thus resolved, and that is why I've come,
This, gentles, is the word I bring to you. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

For hope is always born at the same time as love ... — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Honesty's the best policy. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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

A great man who is vicious will only be a great doer of evil, and a rich man who is not liberal will be only a miserly beggar; for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it, but by spending it - and not by spending as he please but by knowing how to spend it well. To the poor gentleman there is no other way of showing that he is a gentleman than by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered and helpful; not haughty, arrogant or censorious, but above all by being charitable ... and no one who sees him adorned with the virtues I have mentioned, will fail to recognize and judge him, though he know him not, to be of good stock. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Facts are the enemy of truth. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

There are many hours and minutes between now and tomorrowand in any one of them-even in a minute,the house falls — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

As soon as Don Quixote had read the inscription on the parchment he perceived clearly that it referred to the disenchantment of Dulcinea, and returning hearty thanks to heaven that he — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Let each look to himself and not try to make out white black, and black white; for each of us is as God made him, aye, and often worse. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra