Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

he seized a bucket and plunging it into one of the half jars took up three hens and a couple of geese,

Hear me now, o thou bleak and unbearable world
Thou art base and debauched as can be.
And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled
Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee

Oh, woe is me,” said the niece, “my uncle’s a poet, too! He knows everything, he understands everything, and I’d wager that if he wanted to be a mason, he’d know how to build a house as well as a cage.

Countless were the hares ready skinned and the plucked fowls that hung on the trees for burial in the pots, numberless the wildfowl and game of various sorts suspended from the branches that the air might keep them cool. Sancho counted more than sixty wine skins

Det er ret og rimeligt, at den der søger det umulige, fratages det mulige.

…it’s my intention to clear this insula of all kinds of filth, as well as people who are vagrants, idlers, and sluggards, because I want you to know, my friends, that shiftless, lazy people are to the nation what drones are to the hive: they eat the honey that the worker bees produce.

That is the way with woman, to disdain the man who loves her, and to love the man who disdains her.

Y así, acometió a su presunción con las alabanzas de su hermosura, porque no hay cosa que más presto rinda y allane las encastilladas torres de la vanidad de las hermosas que la mesma vanidad, puesta en las lenguas de la adulación.

By the Blessed Virgin ! Is it possible that your grace is so thickheaded and so short on brains that you cannot see that what I'm telling you is the absolute truth.

Honesty's the best policy.

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.

No tiene nada que ver con la voluntad. Los jóvenes quieren ser fieles y no lo son; los viejos quieren ser infieles y no pueden: eso es todo lo que cabe decir.

Oh, base, lowborn, wretched, rude, ignorant, foul-mouthed, ill-spoken, slanderous, insolent varlet! You have dared to speak such words in my presence and in the presence of these distinguished ladies, dared to fill your befuddled imagination with such vileness and effrontery? Leave my presence, unholy monster, repository of lies, stronghold of falsehoods, storehouse of deceits, inventor of iniquities, promulgator of insolence, enemy of the decorum owed to these royal persons. Go, do not appear before me under pain of my wrath!

And thus, from too little sleep and too much reading, his brain dried up and he completely lost his judgment.

"Lifting up his hand to her, he said, "Here, madam, take the hand, or rather, as I may say, the executioner of all earthy miscreants-take, I say, that hand which never woman touched before; no, not even she herself who has entire possession of my whole body; nor do I hold it up to you that you may kiss it, but that you may observe the contexture of the sinews, the ligament of the muscles, and the largeness and dilation of the veins; whence you may conclude how strong that arm must be to which such a hand is joined.