Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

To think that the affairs of this life always remain in the same state is a vain presumption; indeed they all seem to be perpetually changing and moving in a circular course. Spring is followed by summer, summer by autumn, and autumn by winter, which is again followed by spring, and so time continues its everlasting round. But the life of man is ever racing to its end, swifter than time itself, without hope of renewal, unless in the next that is limitless and infinite.

time has more power to undo and change things than the human will.

He is most blessed who loves the most, the freest who is most enslaved by love,

One who loses wealth loses much. One who loses a friend loses more. But one who loses courage loses all.

"The journey is better than the inn".

Not with whom you are born, but with whom you are bred.

"Cambiar el mundo, amigo Sancho, que no es locura ni utopía, sino Justicia!".
Don Quijote.

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.

Señor, las tristezas no se hicieron para las bestias, sino para los hombres; pero si los hombres las sienten demasiado, se vuelven bestias...

I want you to see me naked and performing one or two dozen mad acts, which will take me less than half an hour, because if you have seen them with your own eyes, you can safely swear to any others you might wish to add.

The eyes those silent tongues of love.

One man is no more than another, if he do no more than what another does.

Have I not already told you', replied Don Quixote, 'that I intend to imitate Amadis, and to act the desperate, foolish, furious lover so as also to imitate the valiant Orlando, when he found signs by a spring that the fair Angelica had disgraced herself with Medoro, and the grief turned him mad, and he uprooted trees, sullied the waters of clear springs, slew shepherds, destroyed flocks, burned cottages, tore down houses, dragged away mares and performed a hundred other excesses, worthy to be recorded on the tablets of eternal fame?' [...]
'But to my mind', said Sancho, 'the knights who did all that were pushed into it and had their reasons for their antics and their penances, but what reason have you got for going mad?'
'That is the whole point', replied Don Quixote, 'and therein lies the beauty of my enterprise. A Knight Errant going mad for a good reason - there is neither pleasure nor merit in that. The thing is to become insane without a cause and have my lady think: If I do all this when dry, what would I not do when wet?

The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works.

the praise of the wise few is more important than the mockery of the foolish many,