Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books, enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to him no history in the world had more reality in it.

It seems to me a hard case to make slaves of those whom God and nature have made free.

After I came down from the sky, and after I looked at the earth from that great height and saw how small it was, the burning desire I had to be a governor cooled a little; where’s the greatness in ruling a mustard seed, or the dignity or pride in governing half a dozen men the size of hazel nuts? It seemed to me that this was all there was on the whole earth.

Busco en la muerte la vida, salud en la enfermedad, en la prisión libertad, en lo cerrado salida y en el traidor lealtad. Pero mi suerte, de quien jamás espero algún bien, con el cielo ha estatuido que, pues lo imposible pido, lo posible aun no me den.

Thy enterprises speed, Didst thou the light mid Libya's sands Or Jaca's rocks first see?

O Don Quixote, wise as thou art brave,
La Mancha's splendor and of Spain the star!
To thee I say that if the peerless maid,
Dulcinea del Toboso, is to be restored
to the state that was once hers, it needs must be
that thy squire Sancho take on his bared behind,
those sturdy buttocks, must consent to take
three thousand lashes and three hundred more,
and well laid on, that they may sting and smart;
for those are the authors of her woe
have thus resolved, and that is why I've come,
This, gentles, is the word I bring to you.

Pardon me, your Grace,” said Sancho, “for, as I can neither read nor write, as I have told you before, I neither know nor comprehend the rules of the knightly profession.

What intelligent things you say sometimes ! One would think you had studied.

Seine Ehre kann auch der Arme behalten, nicht aber der Schlechte.

After meat comes mustard; or, like money to a starving man at sea, when there are no victuals to be bought with it.

— Venid acá, gente soez y mal nacida: ¿saltear de caminos llamáis al dar libertad a los encadenados, soltar los presos, acorrer a los miserables, alzar los caídos, remediar los menesterosos? ¡Ah, gente infame

A closed mouth catches no flies.

The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the son of his own works.

The cleverest character in comedy is the clown, for he who would make people take him for a fool, must not be one.

Didn't I tell you, Don Quixote, sir, to turn back, for they were not armies you were going to attack, but flocks of sheep?