Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

"A good joke, that!" returned Don Quixote. "Books that have been printed with the king's licence, and with the approbation of those to whom they have been submitted, and read with universal delight, and extolled by great and small, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, gentle and simple, in a word by people of every sort, of whatever rank or condition they may be — that these should be lies!"

he did not think about any promises his master had made to him, and he did not consider it work but sheer pleasure to go around seeking adventures, no matter how dangerous they might be.

Quem não tenciona satisfazer não regateia condições no contratar.

they were puffing at him with a great pair of bellows; for the whole adventure was so well planned by the duke, the duchess, and their majordomo, that nothing was omitted to make it perfectly successful.

Y, juntando su boca con la mía, habiendo cerrado los labios para darme el primero y ultimo beso, al abrillos se le salió el alma y quedo muerta en mis brazos

perceived a cart covered with royal flags coming along the road they were travelling; and persuaded that this must be some new adventure,

La razón de la sinrazón que a mi razón se hace, de tal manera mi razón enflaquece, que con razón me quejo de la vuestra fermosura. Y también cuando

Ni todos los que se llaman caballeros lo son de todo en todo: que unos son de oro, otros de alquimia, y todos parecen caballeros, pero no todos pueden estar al toque de la piedra de la verdad.

As regards your government of yourself and your household, Sancho, my first piece of advice is to be clean and to cut your fingernails, and not to let them grow long, as some people do, moved by ignorance to believe that long nails make their hand look beautiful, as if those appendages, those excrescences that they leave uncut have any right to be called fingernails at all, because they are more like talons of a kestrel: a monstrous and filthy abuse.

we were taking his bones to be buried in his tomb in Segovia, his home town.’1 ‘And who killed him?’ asked Don Quixote. ‘God did, with a pestilential fever,’ replied the bachelor of arts. ‘That means,’ said Don Quixote, ‘that Our Lord has relieved me of the task I would have had of avenging his death, if anybody else had killed him; but seeing who it was that killed him, all one can do is shrug one’s shoulders and be silent, for that is what I should do if he had killed me.

Sancho, when a man knows not how to read, or is left-handed, it argues one of two things; either that he was the son of exceedingly mean and lowly parents, or that he himself was so incorrigible and ill-conditioned that neither good company nor good teaching could make any impression on him.

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

-Mira, Sancho, por el mesmo que denantes juraste te juro - dijo don Quijote - que tienes el más corto entendimiento que tiene ni tuvo escudero en el mundo. ¿Que es posible que en cuanto ha que andas conmigo no has echado de ver que todas las cosas de los caballeros andantes parecen quimeras, necedades y desatinos, y que son todas hechas al revés? Y no porque sea ello ansí, sino porque andan entre nosotros siempre una caterva de encantadores, que todas nuestras cosas mudan y truecan, y les vuelven según su gusto, y según tienen la gana de favorecernos o destruirnos; y así, eso que a ti te parece bacía de barbero, me parece a mí el yelmo de Mambrino, y a otro le parecerá otra cosa.

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.

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 está encerrado; que muchas veces la presencia de la cosa amada turba y enmudece la intención más determinada y la lengua más atrevida.