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

Fortune may have yet a better success in reserve for you and they who lose today may win tomorrow.

Riches are of little avail in many of the calamities to which mankind are liable.

The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.

All of that is true,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘but we cannot all be friars, and God brings His children to heaven by many paths: chivalry is a religion, and there are sainted knights in Glory.’ Yes,’ responded Sancho, ‘but I’ve heard that there are more friars in heaven than knights errant.’ That is true,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘because the number of religious is greater than the number of knights.’ There are many who are errant,’ said Sancho. Many,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘but few who deserve to be called knights.

Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.

The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were.