120 Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

Miguel de Cervantes quotes

1. A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.

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

3. I was so free with him as not to mince the matter.

4. They can expect nothing but their labor for their pains.

5. En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivia un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocin flaco y galgo corredor.

6. Which I have earned with the sweat of my brows.

7. By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece.

8. Put you in this pickle.

9. Can we ever have too much of a good thing?

10. The charging of his enemy was but the work of a moment.

11. Those two fatal words, Mine and Thine.

12. The eyes those silent tongues of Love.

13. There's not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

14. Without a wink of sleep.

15. No limits but the sky.

16. To give the devil his due.

17. You're leaping over the hedge before you come to the stile.

18. Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things underground, and much more in the skies.

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

20. Ill luck, you know, seldom comes alone.

21. Why do you lead me a wild-goose chase?

22. Experience, the universal Mother of Sciences.

23. Let every man mind his own business.

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

25. Raise a hue and cry.

26. To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there is more reason to fear than to hope. 'Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket. And though I am but a clown, or a bumpkin, as you may say, yet I would have you to know I know what is what, and have always taken care of the main chance...

27. Within a stone's throw of it.

28. The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me.

29. Absence, that common cure of love.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

30. From pro's and con's they fell to a warmer way of disputing.

31. Thou hast seen nothing yet.

32. My memory is so bad that many times I forget my own name.

33. 'Twill grieve me so to the heart that I shall cry my eyes out.

34. Ready to split his sides with laughing.

35. My honor is dearer to me than my life.

36. Think before thou speakest.

37. Let us forget and forgive injuries.

38. I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.

39. I begin to smell a rat.

40. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

41. Let none presume to tell me that the pen is preferable to the sword.

42. It is a common proverb, beauteous princess, that diligence is the mother of good fortune.

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

44. It is not the hand but the understanding of a man that may be said to write.

45. When the head aches, all the members partake of the pains.

46. History is in a manner a sacred thing, so far as it contains truth; for where truth is, the supreme Father of it may also be said to be, at least, inasmuch as concerns truth.

47. Cada uno es como Dios le hizo, y aun peor muchas veces.

48. Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.

49. The fair sex.

50. A little in one's own pocket is better than much in another man's purse. 'Tis good to keep a nest egg. Every little makes a mickle.

51. Remember the old saying, 'Faint heart ne'er won fair lady.'

52. Forewarned forearmed.

53. As well look for a needle in a bottle of hay.

54. Are we to mark this day with a white or a black stone?

55. I'll turn over a new leaf.

56. La pluma es la lengua del alma: cuales fueren los conceptos que en ella se engendraren, tales seran sus escritos.

57. Marriage is a noose.

58. There are only two families in the world, the Haves and the Have-Nots.

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

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

61. There is no love lost, sir.

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

63. Tomorrow will be a new day.

64. Great persons are able to do great kindnesses.

65. I was ever charitable and good to the poor, and scorn to take the bread out of another man's mouth. On the other side, by our Lady, they shall play me no foul play. I am an old cur at a crust, and can sleep dog-sleep when I list. I can look sharp as well as another, and let me alone to keep the cobwebs out of my eyes. I know where the shoe wrings me. I will know who and who is together. Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship. And in my mind, the main point of governing, is to make a good beginning.

66. Time ripens all things. No man is born wise. Bishops are made of men and not of stones.

67. An honest man's word is as good as his bond.

68. Good wits jump; a word to the wise is enough.

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

70. What a man has, so much he's sure of.

71. The pot calls the kettle black.

72. Mum's the word.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

73. I shall be as secret as the grave.

74. The ass will carry his load, but not a double load; ride not a free horse to death.

75. He ... got the better of himself, and that's the best kind of victory one can wish for.

76. Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

77. There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.

78. For if he like a madman lived, At least he like a wise one died.

79. I am almost frighted out of my seven senses.

80. Well, now, there's a remedy for everything except death.

81. Didn't I tell you, Don Quixote, sir, to turn back, for they were not armies you were going to attack, but flocks of sheep?

82. The painter Orbaneja of Ubeda, if he chanced to draw a cock, he wrote under it, 'This is a cock,' lest the people should take it for a fox.

83. Many count their chickens before they are hatched; and where they expect bacon, meet with broken bones.

84. I find my familiarity with thee has bred contempt.

85. Delay always breeds danger.

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

87. Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy.

88. I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine; every man for himself, and God for us all.

89. Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills.

90. A knight errant who turns mad for a reason deserves neither merit nor thanks. The thing is to do it without cause.

91. In me the need to talk is a primary impulse, and I can't help saying right off what comes to my tongue.

92. I can tell where my own shoe pinches me; and you must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff.

93. Let each man say what he chooses; if because of this I am criticized by the ignorant, I shall not be chastised by the learned.

94. 'You are a villain and a scoundrel,' said Don Quixote, 'and you are the one who is vacant and foolish; I have more upstairs than the whore who bore you ever did.'

95. Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.

96. My heart is wax molded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain.

97. Amistades que son ciertas nadie las puede turbar.

98. Amor y deseo son dos cosas diferentes; que no todo lo que se ama se desea, ni todo lo que se desea se ama.

99. El que lee mucho y anda mucho, ve mucho y sabe mucho.

100. En los principios amorosos los desenganos prestos suelen ser remedios calificados.

101. Encomiendate a Dios de todo corazon, que muchas veces suele llover sus misericordias en el tiempo que estan mas secas las esperanzas.

102. La buena y verdadera amistad no debe ser sospechosa en nada.

103. Mas vale la pena en el rostro que la mancha en el corazon.

104. Puede haber amor sin celos, pero no sin temores.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

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

106. He who loses wealth loses much, he who loses a friend loses more, but he that loses his honor loses all.

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

108. A stout man's heart breaks bad luck.

109. Hunger, is the best sauce.

110. It will probably never be possible to prove that Cervantes was a cristiano nuevo, but the circumstantial evidence seems compelling. The Instruccion written by Fernan Diaz de Toledo in the mid-fifteenth century lists the Cervantes family as among the many noble clans of Spain that were of converso origin.

1. He had a face like a blessing.

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

3. Old, that's an affront no woman can well bear.

4. One should not talk of hatters in the house of the hanged.

5. It is courage that vanquishes in war, and not good weapons.

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

7. I follow a more easy, and, in my opinion, a wiser course, namely--to inveigh against the levity of the female sex, their fickleness, their double-dealing, their rotten promises, their broken faith, and, finally, their want of judgment in bestowing their affections.

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

9. Great people create great acts of kindness.

10. One day, in the San Francisco walk, he came upon some badly painted figures and observed that good painters imitate nature but bad ones vomit it forth.