Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra > Quotes

“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, Don Quixote

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“The proof of the pudding is the eating.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“There is no book so bad...that it does not have something good in it.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“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

“There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“For neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand.”
― Cervantes, Don Quixote

“Hunger is the best sauce in the world.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“The reason for the unreason with which you treat my reason , so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of your beauty.”
― Cervantes Saavedra

“I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote de La Mancha, Vol. 1

“El que lee mucho y anda mucho, ve mucho y sabe mucho.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha

“Until death it is all life”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quijote, "you don't know much about adventures.”
― Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote: The Funniest and Most Tragic Picaresque Satire – A Masterful Translation of Cervantes' Spanish Classic

“All sorrows are less with bread. ”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Thou hast seen nothing yet.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“He who sings scares away his woes.”
― Cervantes

“Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“I do not deny that what happened to us is a thing worth laughing at. But it is not worth telling, for not everyone is sufficiently intelligent to be able to see things from the right point of view.”
― Cervantes, Don Quixote

“Es natural condición de las mujeres desdeñar a quien las quiere y amar a quien las aborrece”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote de la Mancha

“... he who's down one day can be up the next, unless he really wants to stay in bed, that is...”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Wit and humor do not reside in slow minds.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“I was born free, and that I might live in freedom I chose the solitude of the fields; in the trees of the mountains I find society, the clear waters of the brooks are my mirrors, and to the trees and waters I make known my thoughts and charms. I am a fire afar off, a sword laid aside. Those whom I have inspired with love by letting them see me, I have by words undeceived, and if their longings live on hope—and I have given none to Chrysostom or to any other—it cannot justly be said that the death of any is my doing, for it was rather his own obstinacy than my cruelty that killed him; and if it be made a charge against me that his wishes were honourable, and that therefore I was bound to yield to them, I answer that when on this very spot where now his grave is made he declared to me his purity of purpose, I told him that mine was to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruits of my retirement and the spoils of my beauty; and if, after this open avowal, he chose to persist against hope and steer against the wind, what wonder is it that he should sink in the depths of his infatuation? If I had encouraged him, I should be false; if I had gratified him, I should have acted against my own better resolution and purpose. He was persistent in spite of warning, he despaired without being hated. Bethink you now if it be reasonable that his suffering should be laid to my charge. Let him who has been deceived complain, let him give way to despair whose encouraged hopes have proved vain, let him flatter himself whom I shall entice, let him boast whom I shall receive; but let not him call me cruel or homicide to whom I make no promise, upon whom I practise no deception, whom I neither entice nor receive. It has not been so far the will of Heaven that I should love by fate, and to expect me to love by choice is idle. Let this general declaration serve for each of my suitors on his own account, and let it be understood from this time forth that if anyone dies for me it is not of jealousy or misery he dies, for she who loves no one can give no cause for jealousy to any, and candour is not to be confounded with scorn. Let him who calls me wild beast and basilisk, leave me alone as something noxious and evil; let him who calls me ungrateful, withhold his service; who calls me wayward, seek not my acquaintance; who calls me cruel, pursue me not; for this wild beast, this basilisk, this ungrateful, cruel, wayward being has no kind of desire to seek, serve, know, or follow them. If Chrysostom's impatience and violent passion killed him, why should my modest behaviour and circumspection be blamed? If I preserve my purity in the society of the trees, why should he who would have me preserve it among men, seek to rob me of it? I have, as you know, wealth of my own, and I covet not that of others; my taste is for freedom, and I have no relish for constraint; I neither love nor hate anyone; I do not deceive this one or court that, or trifle with one or play with another. The modest converse of the shepherd girls of these hamlets and the care of my goats are my recreations; my desires are bounded by these mountains, and if they ever wander hence it is to contemplate the beauty of the heavens, steps by which the soul travels to its primeval abode.”
― Cervantes, Don Quixote

“The pen is the tongue of the mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“...for hope is always born at the same time as love...”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man. And when we focus our attention upon that beauty, not upon the physical, love generally arises with great violence and intensity. I am well aware that I am not handsome, but I also know that I am not deformed, and it is enough for a man of worth not to be a monster for him to be dearly loved, provided he has those spiritual endowments I have spoken of.”
― Miguel Cervantes