Miguel de Cervantes Quotes
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And for the citation of so many authors, 'tis the easiest thing in nature. Find out one of these books with an alphabetical index, and without any farther ceremony, remove it verbatim into your own... there are fools enough to be thus drawn into an opinion of the work; at least, such a flourishing train of attendants will give your book a fashionable air, and recommend it for sale.
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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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Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.
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When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical may be madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness ...Maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.
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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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What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?
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I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar.
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"He preaches well that lives well," quoth Sancho, "that's all the divinity I can understand."
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There's no sauce in the world like hunger.
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Lovers are commonly industrious to make themselves uneasy.
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Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last.
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Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.
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What is bought is cheaper than a gift.
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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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"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 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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One swallow alone does not make a summer.
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He who sings frightens away his ills.
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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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Nay, what is worse, perhaps turn poet, which, they say, is an infectious and incurable distemper.