Cervantes Quotes

Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.

For me alone Don Quixote was born and I for him. His was the power of action, mine of writing.

Arms are my ornaments, warfare my repose.

You must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff.

Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse.

Urgent necessity prompts many to do things, at the very thoughts of which they perhaps would start at other times.

Thank you for nothing.

He that will not when he may, When he would, he should have nay.

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

Cunning cheats itself wholly, and other people partially.

When good luck knocks at the door, let him in and keep him there.

Be brief, for no talk can please when too long. Being prepared is half the victory.

When we are asleep, we are all equal.

Other men's pains are easily borne.

Happy the man to whom heaven has given a morsel of bread without laying him under the obligation of thanking any other for it than heaven itself.

Lovers are commonly industrious to make themselves uneasy.

Laws that only threaten, and are not kept, become like the log that was given to the frogs to be their king, which they feared at first, but soon scorned and trampled on.

Great people create great acts of kindness.

"From what I have seen here," remarked Sancho, "justice is so good a thing that even robbers find it necessary."

Ill-luck, you know, seldom comes alone.

It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued.

The wise hand does not all the tongue dictates.

Wine in excess keeps neither secrets nor promises.

All the vices, Sancho, bring some kind of pleasure with them; but envy brings nothing but irritation, bitterness, and rage.

The good governor should have a broken leg and keep at home.

The little birds have God for their caterer.

She who desires to see, desires also to be seen.

Necessity urges desperate measures.

My memory is so bad that many times I forget my own name.

There were but two families in the world, Have-much and Have-little.

Blessed be he who invented sleep, a cloak that covers all a man's thoughts.

When the head aches, all the members partake of the pain.

One swallow alone does not make a summer.

I shall be as secret as the grave.

There is nothing costs less than civility.

A wise man does not trust all his eggs to one basket.

Let us forget and forgive injuries.

My thoughts ran a wool-gathering.

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.

Fortune may have yet a better success in reserve for you and they who lose today may win tomorrow.

Whoever is ignorant is vulgar.

Let every man look before he leaps.

Whether it's the pot that hits the rock or the rock that hits the pot , it's the pot that will break every time

All persons are not discreet enough to know how to take things by the right handle.

But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.

Historians ought to be precise, faithful, and unprejudiced; and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should make them swerve from the way of truth.

My heart is wax molded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain.

Riches are of little avail in many of the calamities to which mankind are liable.

Take away the motive, and you take away the sin.