Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

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 ... got the better of himself, and that's the best kind of victory one can wish for.

It will grieve me so to the heart, that I shall cry my eyes out.

¡Oh fuerza de la adulación, a cuánto te estiendes, y cuán dilatados límites son los de tu juridición agradable!

Es de vidrio la mujer; pero no se ha de probar si se puede o no quebrar, porque todo podría ser. Y es más fácil el quebrarse, y no es cordura ponerse a peligro de romperse lo que no puede soldarse. Y en esta opinión estén todos, y en razón la fundo: que si hay Dánaes en el mundo, hay pluvias de oro también.

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?

I say, patience and shuffle the cards!

[He] is not going to exit to applause, even if the entire human race should favor him.

I wanted only to offer it to you plain and bare, unadorned by a prologue or the endless catalogue of sonnets, epigrams and laudatory poems that are usually placed at the beginning of books.

It is not the hand but the understanding of a man that may be said to write.

Fantasy filled his mind from everything that he read in the books - enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, flirtations, love affairs, misfortunes and impossible nonsense. As a result, he came to believe that all those fictitious adventures he was reading about were true, and for him there was no history more authentic in the world.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Fate anche in modo che, leggendo la vostra storia, il malinconico rida e il gaio lo diventi ancora di più, l’ignorante non si annoi e il colto ne ammiri l’ingegno, il serio non la disprezzi e il saggio non manchi di lodarla.

Vete a la lengua, que en ella consisten los mayores daños de la humana vida.

Sancho, just as you want people to believe what you have seen in the sky, I want you to believe what I saw in the Cave of Montesinos. And that is all I have to say.