Miguel de Cervantes Quotes
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There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.
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Wine taken in moderation never does any harm.
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It is not the responsibility of knights errant to discover whether the afflicted, the enchained and the oppressed whom they encounter on the road are reduced to these circumstances and suffer this distress for their vices, or for their virtues: the knight's sole responsibility is to succour them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds.
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The darts of love are blunted by maiden modesty.
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Arms are my ornaments, warfare my repose.
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Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship. And in my mind, the main point of governing, is to make a good beginning.
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Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.
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"From what I have seen here," remarked Sancho, "justice is so good a thing that even robbers find it necessary."
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There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.
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God exalts the man who humbles himself.
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A closed mouth catches no flies.
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Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown.
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It is a true saying that a man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him.
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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.
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There are but few proverbial sayings that are not true, for they are all drawn from experience itself, which is the mother of all sciences.
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Be not under the dominion of thine own will; it is the vice of the ignorant, who vainly presume on their own understanding.
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Translation from one language to another is like viewing a piece of tapestry on the wrong side where though the figures are distinguishable yet there are so many ends and threads that the beauty and exactness of the work is obscured.
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Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large, of dwarfs giants, of suspicions truths.
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Nor has his death the world deceived than his wondrous life surprised; if he like a madman lived least he like a wise one died.
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Every production must resemble its author.
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The pen is the language of the soul; as the concepts that in it are generated, such will be its writings.
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A man prepared has half fought the battle.
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Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.
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Be brief, for no talk can please when too long.