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.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

...let his sin be his punishment, let him eat it with his bread, and let that be an end to it.

So it appears to me, for when he could and should have wielded his pen to praise the virtues of so good a knight, it seems he intentionally passes over them in silence, since historians must and ought to be exact, truthful, and absolutely free of passions, for neither interest, fear, rancor, nor affection should make them deviate from the path of the truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, repository of great deeds, witness to the past, example and adviser to the present, and forewarning to the future.

Good painters imitate nature, but bad ones spew it up.

After the gratifications of brutish appetites are past, the greatest pleasure then is to get rid of that which entertained it.

But I have heard it said,” said Don Quixote, “that troubles take wing for the man who can sing.

The dead to the grave, the living to the loaf.

This fierce basilisk, this ungrateful, cruel, supercilious wretch, will neither seek, serve, own, nor follow you in any shape whatever.

Having cleaned his armor and made a full helmet out of a simple headpiece, and having given a name to his horse and decided on one for himself, he realized that the only thing left for him to do was to find a lady to love; for the knight errant without a lady-love was a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul.

he who has the good to his hand and chooses the bad, that the good he complains of may not come to him.

Anyone who is ignorant, even a lord and prince, can and should be counted as one of the mob.

he who does not know how to take advantage of luck when it comes to him, has no right to complain if it gives him the go-by;

since historians must and ought to be exact, truthful, and absolutely free of passions, for neither interest, fear, rancor, nor affection should make them deviate from the path of the truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, repository of great deeds, witness to the past, example and adviser to the present, and forewarning to the future.

You are a coward by nature, Sancho, said don Quixote, yet to prevent you from claiming I am obstinate and never do as you recommend, just this once I shall take your advice and keep my distance from the fury that so frightens you, but on one condition: never, in life or in death, will you tell anyone that I retreated from this peril out of fear, but rather acceded to your entreaties; and if you say anything else, you will be lying, and I give you the lie from now until then and from then until now, and I affirm that you lie and you will lie whenever you think or say it. and do not answer me back; for the mere thought that I am retreating from peril, especially this peril, which does appear to have some faint shadow of fear about it, is enough to make me take my stand here and await alone not only that Holy Brotherhood whose name you speak in such terror but the brothers of the twwelve tribes of Israel, and the seven Maccabees, and Castor and Pollux, and all the brothers and brotherhoods in the world.

[reading a work in translation] is like viewing a piece of Flemish tapestry on the wrong side.

Your grace, come back, Señor Don Quixote, I swear to God you're charging sheep !