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)

En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme,

could see you all strung by the gills, like sardines on a twig!

"...aunque pusieron silencio a las lenguas, no le pudieron poner a las plumas, las cuales, con más libertad que las lenguas, suelen dar a entender a quien quieren lo que en el alma esta encerrado: que muchas veces la presencia de la cosa amada turba y enmudece la intención más determinada y la lengua más atrevida." - Don Quijote de la Mancha, Parte I, Cap. XXIV

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.

Nothing flows from her, vile rabble.

"Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water."
~ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ~ September 29, 1547 - April 23, 1616

Poetry, gentle sir, is, as I take it, like a tender young maiden of supreme beauty, to array, bedeck, and adorn whom is the task of several other maidens,

»Sea moderado tu sueño, que el que no madruga con el sol, no goza del día; y advierte, ¡oh Sancho!, que la diligencia es madre de la buena ventura, y la pereza, su contraria, jamás llegó al término que pide un buen deseo.

It is by rugged paths like these they go That scale the heights of immortality, Unreached by those that falter here below.

The landlord replied he had no chickens, for the kites had stolen them.

Ésa es natural condición de mujeres -dijo don Quijote-: desdeñar a quien las quiere y amar a quien las aborrece. Pasa adelante, Sancho.

"Sometimes when a father has an ugly, loutish son, the love he bears him so blindfolds his eyes that he does not see his defects, or, rather, takes them for gifts and charms of mind and body, and talks of them to his friends as wit and grace. I, however — for though I pass for the father, I am but the stepfather to "Don Quixote" — have no desire to go with the current of custom, or to implore thee, dearest reader, almost with tears in my eyes, as others do, to pardon or excuse the defects thou wilt perceive in this child of mine. Thou art neither its kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and thy will as free as any man's, whate'er he be, thou art in thine own house and master of it as much as the king of his taxes and thou knowest the common saying, "Under my cloak I kill the king;" all which exempts and frees thee from every consideration and obligation, and thou canst say what thou wilt of the story without fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good thou mayest say of it."

and had they been aware of the ancient custom of the Greeks, they would have erected a trophy on the spot.

when a man knows not how to read, or is left-handed, it

In a village of La Mancha,