Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote (1605)

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

Miguel de Cervantes
Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even.

Miguel de Cervantes
But if you build your life on dreams it's prudent to recall; a man with moonlight in his hands has nothing there at all.

Miguel de Cervantes
Let me leap out of the frying-pan into the fire; or, out of God's blessing into the warm sun.

Miguel de Cervantes
Here lies a gentleman bold Who was so very brave He went to lengths untold, And on the brink of the grave Death had on him no hold. By the world he set small store— He frightened it to the core— Yet somehow, by Fate's plan, Though he'd lived a crazy man, When he died he was sane once more.

Miguel de Cervantes
No man is more than another unless he does more than another.

Miguel de Cervantes
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.

Miguel de Cervantes
There is no jewel in the world so valuable as a chaste and virtuous woman.

Miguel de Cervantes
Be not under the dominion of thine own will; it is the vice of the ignorant, who vainly presume on their own understanding.

Miguel de Cervantes
Is it possible your pragmatical worship should not know that the comparisons made between wit and wit, courage and courage, beauty and beauty, birth and birth, are always odious and ill taken?.

Miguel de Cervantes
If thou takest virtue for the rule of life, and valuest thyself upon acting in all things comfortably thereto, thou wilt have no cause to envy lords and princes; for blood is inherited, but virtue is common property, and may be acquired by all; it has, moreover, an intrinsic worth, which blood has not.

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

Miguel de Cervantes
For men may prove and use their friends, as the poet expresses it, usque ad aras, meaning that a friend should not be required to act contrary to the law of God.

Miguel de Cervantes
Does the devil possess you? You're leaping over the hedge before you come at the stile.

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
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.

Miguel de Cervantes
By God and upon my conscience, said the devil, I never observed it, for my mind is occupied with so many different things that I was forgetting the main thing I came about. This demon must be an honest fellow and a good Christian, said Sancho; for if he wasn't he wouldn't swear by God and his conscience; I feel sure now there must be good souls even in hell itself.

Miguel de Cervantes
Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you.

Miguel de Cervantes
I would reply that fiction is all the better the more it looks like truth, and gives the more pleasure the more probability and possibility there is about it.

Miguel de Cervantes
I follow a more easy, and, in my opinion, a wiser course, namely--to inveigh against the levity of the female sex, their fickleness, their double-dealing, their rotten promises, their broken faith, and, finally, their want of judgment in bestowing their affections.

Miguel de Cervantes
Do but take care to express yourself in a plain, easy Manner, in well-chosen, significant and decent Terms, and to give a harmonious and pleasing Turn to your Periods: study to explain your Thoughts, and set them in the truest Light, labouring as much as possible, not to leave them dark nor intricate, but clear and intelligible.

Miguel de Cervantes
Tis an old saying, the Devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glitters. From the tail of the plough, Bamba was made King of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes.

Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning, indicating a sound body and a mind free from care; but his master, being unable to sleep himself awakened him, saying, "I am amazed, Sancho, at the torpor of thy soul; it seems as if thou wert made of marble or brass, insensible of emotion or sentiment!...

Miguel de Cervantes
The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were.

Miguel de Cervantes
In short, virtue cannot live where envy reigns, nor liberality subsist with niggardliness.

Miguel de Cervantes