Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

Many count their chickens before they are hatched; and where they expect bacon, meet with broken bones.

Miguel de Cervantes
I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.

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

Miguel de Cervantes
Now had Aurora displayed her mantle over the blushing skies, and dark night withdrawn her sable veil.

Miguel de Cervantes
That's the nature of women … not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.

Miguel de Cervantes
Many go out for wool, and come home shorn themselves.

Miguel de Cervantes
Blessed be those happy ages that were strangers to the dreadful fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor I am satisfied is now in Hell, receiving the reward of his cursed invention, which is the cause that very often a cowardly base hand takes away the life of the bravest gentleman.

Miguel de Cervantes
Would puzzle a convocation of casuists to resolve their degrees of consanguinity.

Miguel de Cervantes
Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.

Miguel de Cervantes
Since Don Quixote de la Mancha is a crazy fool and a madman, and since Sancho Panza, his squire, knows it, yet, for all that, serves and follows him, and hangs on these empty promises of his, there can be no doubt that he is more of a madman and a fool than his master.

Miguel de Cervantes
Let none presume to tell me that the pen is preferable to the sword.

Miguel de Cervantes
Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and the old sheep.

Miguel de Cervantes
There is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain which death does not remove.

Miguel de Cervantes
In me the need to talk is a primary impulse, and I can't help saying right off what comes to my tongue.

Miguel de Cervantes
Love is influenced by no consideration, recognizes no restraints of reason, and is of the same nature as death, that assails alike the lofty palaces of kings and the humble cabins of shepherds; and when it takes entire possession of a heart, the first thing it does is to banish fear and shame from it.

Miguel de Cervantes
It is better that a judge should lean on the side of compassion than severity.

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

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

Miguel de Cervantes
I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Miguel de Cervantes
I don't know that ever I saw one in my born days.

Miguel de Cervantes