Miguel De Cervantes Quotes

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Miguel De Cervantes

“For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Tis a dainty thing to command, though twere but a flock of sheep.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

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.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Fair and softly goes far.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Miguel De Cervantes

“By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

He who sings frightens away his ills.

— Miguel De Cervantes

“It is a true saying that a man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“The wicked are always ungrateful.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Urgent necessity prompts many to do things.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Men of great talents, whether poets or historians, seldom escape the attacks of those who, without ever favoring the world with any production of their own, take delight in criticising the works of others.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“He who reforms, God assists.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“The road to the inn is much better than the stay.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Never meddle with play-actors, for they're a favoured race.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Mere flimflam stories, and nothing but shams and lies.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“To be good to the vile is to throw water into the sea.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Roque ... lined his men up and had them produce all the clothing, jewels, money, and other objects that they had stolen since the last time they had divided the spoils. Having made a hasty appraisal and reduced to terms of money those items that could not be divided, he split the whole into shares with such equity and exactitude that in not a single instance did he go beyond or fall short of a strict distributive justice. They were all well satisfied with the payment received, indeed they were quite well pleased; and Roque then turned to Don Quixote.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Let me leap out of the frying-pan into the fire; or, out of God's blessing into the warm sun.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“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.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Health and cheerfulness make beauty”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Miguel De Cervantes

“It requires a long time to know anyone.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“The woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself be so even amidst an army of soldiers.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Man have to have friends even in hell.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Wit and humor belong to genius alone.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

Well-gotten wealth may lose itself, but the ill-gotten loses its master also.

— Miguel De Cervantes

“We are all as God made us and frequently much worse.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“There is no proverb that is not true.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“All persons are not discreet enough to know how to take things by the right handle.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Miguel De Cervantes

“There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

[To] turn poet, they say, is an infectious and incurable distemper.

— Miguel De Cervantes

“If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“He that gives quickly gives twice.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

“You are a devil at everything, and there is no kind of thing in the 'versal world but what you can turn your hand into.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

A good name is better than bags of gold.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Little said is soon amended.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Everything disturbs an absent lover.

— Miguel De Cervantes

God who gives the wound gives the salve.

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Miguel De Cervantes