Miguel de Cervantes quotes:

Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.

From reading too much, and sleeping too little, his brain dried up on him and he lost his judgment.

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.

Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.

The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.

Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.

Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.

Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.

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

Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.

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

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

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

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.

It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.

The eyes those silent tongues of love.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.

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

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

A bad year and a bad month to all the backbiting bitches in the world!...

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.

One who has not only the four S's, which are required in every good lover, but even the whole alphabet; as for example... Agreeable, Bountiful, Constant, Dutiful, Easy, Faithful, Gallant, Honorable, Ingenious, Kind, Loyal, Mild, Noble, Officious, Prudent, Quiet, Rich, Secret, True, Valiant, Wise; the X indeed, is too harsh a letter to agree with him, but he is Young and Zealous.

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

To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.

He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.

Among the attributes of God, although they are equal, mercy shines with even more brilliance than justice.

A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.

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

Man appoints, and God disappoints.

There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.

It's up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they're going well ... For I've heard that what they call fortune is a flighty woman who drinks too much, and, what's more, she's blind, so she can't see what she's doing, and she doesn't know who she's knocking over or who she's raising up.

The good governor should have a broken leg and keep at home.

Be a terror to the butchers, that they may be fair in their weight; and keep hucksters and fraudulent dealers in awe, for the same reason.

Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one.

And for the citation of so many authors, 'tis the easiest thing in nature. Find out one of these books with an alphabetical index, and without any farther ceremony, remove it verbatim into your own... there are fools enough to be thus drawn into an opinion of the work; at least, such a flourishing train of attendants will give your book a fashionable air, and recommend it for sale.

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

Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.

Comparisons are odious.

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.

True valor lies between cowardice and rashness.

All sorrows are less with bread.

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

Delay always breeds danger.

The darts of love are blunted by maiden modesty.

There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or at least alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.

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

The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.

There's no taking trout with dry breeches.

Since Don Quixote de la Mancha is a crazy fool and a madman, and since Sancho Panza, his squire, knows it, yet, for all that, serves and follows him, and hangs on these empty promises of his, there can be no doubt that he is more of a madman and a fool than his master.

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.

He had a face like a blessing.

Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.

I find my familiarity with thee has bred contempt.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

The virtuous woman must be treated like a relic - adored, but not handled; she should be guarded and prized, like a fine flower-garden, the beauty and fragrance of which the owner allows others to enjoy only at a distance, and through iron walls.

There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate.

Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it....

The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.

Leap out of the frying pan into the fire.

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

My thoughts ran a wool-gathering.

Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

Great persons are able to do great kindnesses.

Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.

Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.

Let us make hay while the sun shines.

Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable

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

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 is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.

All kinds of beauty do not inspire love; there is a kind which only pleases the sight, but does not captivate the affections.

Jests that give pains are no jests.

In every case, the remedy is to take action. Get clear about exactly what it is that you need to learn and exactly what you need to do to learn it. BEING CLEAR KILLS FEAR. Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

It is good to live and learn.

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?

Too much sanity may be madness.

Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large, of dwarfs giants, of suspicions truths.

No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden better than her own reserve.

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.

Tis the only comfort of the miserable to have partners in their woes.

There's no love lost between us.

There is no love lost between us.

Virtue is the truest nobility.

I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.

God who sends the wound sends the medicine.

Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Honesty's the best policy.

Spare your breath to cool your porridge.

I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine; every man for himself, and God for us all.

The proof is in the pudding.

The proof of the pudding is the eating.

The worst reconciliation is better than the best divorce.

The pitcher goes so often to the fountain that if gets broken.

In hell there is no retention.

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

When you are at Rome, do as you see.

When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.

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

Fair and softly goes far.

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

Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Hunger is the best sauce in the world.

There's no sauce in the world like hunger.

Laws that only threaten, and are not kept, become like the log that was given to the frogs to be their king, which they feared at first, but soon scorned and trampled on.

Once a woman parts with her virtue, she loses the esteem even of the man whose vows and tears won her to abandon it.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.

Tis an old saying, the Devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glitters. From the tail of the plough, Bamba was made King of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes.

Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens.

Does the devil possess you? You're leaping over the hedge before you come at the stile.

A stout heart breaks bad luck.

Historians ought to be precise, faithful, and unprejudiced; and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should make them swerve from the way of truth.

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.

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

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