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.

It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.

One swallow alone does not make a summer.

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.

Great expectations are better than a poor possession.

Other men's pains are easily borne.

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