Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

1547 – 1616

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (29 September 1547 – 23 April 1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet and playwright. He is most famous for his novel Don Quixote, or Don Quijote de la Mancha, which is considered by many to be the first modern novel, one of the greatest works in Western literature, and the greatest of the Spanish language.

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Dulcinea del Toboso es la más hermosa mujer del mundo, y yo el más desdichado caballero de la tierra, y no es bien que mi flaqueza defraude esta verdad. Aprieta, caballero, la lanza, y quítame la vida, pues me has quitado la honra.

"Muchos son los andantes," dijo Sancho.
Muchos," respondió don Quijote, "pero pocos los que merecen nombre de caballeros.

Love is influenced by no consideration, recognizes no restraints of reason, and is of the same nature as death, that assails alike the lofty palaces of kings and the humble cabins of shepherds; and when it takes entire possession of a heart, the first thing it does is to banish fear and shame from it.

With these meager scraps of Latin and the like, you may perhaps be taken for a scholar, which is honorable and profitable these days.

"De paja y de heno...",

My thoughts ran a wool-gathering; and I did like the countryman who looked for his ass while he was mounted on his back.

Fear has many eyes and can see things underground

Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.

mucha diferencia hay de las obras que se hacen por amor a las que se hacen por agradecimiento.

In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind. His fantasy filled with everything he had read in his books, enchantments as well as combats, battles, challenges, wounds, courtings, loves, torments, and other impossible foolishness, and he became so convinced in his imagination of the truth of all the countless grandiloquent and false inventions he read that for him no history in the world was truer. He would say that El Cid Ruy Díaz4 had

...no es un hombre más que otro si no hace más que otro.

Nadie nace enseñado, y de los hombres se hacen los obispos, que no de las piedras.

Pon, ¡oh miserable y endurecido animal!, pon, digo, esos tus ojos de machuelo espantadizo en las niñas destos míos, comparados a rutilantes estrellas, y veráslos llorar hilo a hilo y madeja a madeja, haciendo surcos, carreras y sendas por los hermosos campos de mis mejillas.

Qui se humilliat exaltabitur

The book depicts thoughts, unveils imaginings, answers unspoken questions, clarifies doubts, resolves arguments, and finally reveals the very atoms of the most curiosity-driven desire.