Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

Ill-luck, you know, seldom comes alone.

But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.

Blessings on him, who invented sleep.

Blessed be he who invented sleep, a cloak that covers all a man's thoughts.

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.

Every tooth in a man's head is more valuable than a diamond.

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

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

We ought to love our Maker for His own sake, without either hope of good or fear of pain.

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

Virtue is the truest nobility.

I shall be as secret as the grave.

Let the worst come to the worst.

Great expectations are better than a poor possession.

Do not eat garlic or onions; for their smell will reveal that you are a peasant.

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

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.

There are two kinds of people in this world, my grandmother used to say: the Have's and the Have-not's, and she stuck to the Have's. And today, Señor Don Quixote, people are more interested in having than in knowing. An ass covered with gold makes a better impression than a horse with a packsaddle.

Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown.

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

There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

Let everyone turn himself around, and look at home, and he will find enough to do.

Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep. It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak.

A Man Without Honor is Worse than Dead.

Love not what you are but only what you may become.

True valor lies in the middle between cowardice and rashness.

Since we have a good loaf, let us not look for cheesecakes.

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

I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice.

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

For hope is always born at the same time as love.

Great people create great acts of kindness.

Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.

I have other fish to fry.

For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.

The absent feel and fear every ill.

Digo, paciencia y barajar. What I say is, patience, and shuffle the cards.

Maybe the greatest madness is to see life as it is rather than what it could be.

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.

How will he who does not know how to govern himself know how to govern others?

Blessed be those happy ages that were strangers to the dreadful fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor I am satisfied is now in Hell, receiving the reward of his cursed invention, which is the cause that very often a cowardly base hand takes away the life of the bravest gentleman.

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

Take away the motive, and you take away the sin.

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

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

The journey is better than the inn".

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.

Where one door shuts another opens.