Quotes By Miguel De Cervantes

Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.

He preaches well that lives well.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.

Virtue is the truest nobility.

Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.

Jests that give pains are no jests.

That which costs little is less valued.

A person dishonored is worst than dead.

There's no taking trout with dry breeches.

Tis the only comfort of the miserable to have partners in their woes.

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.

Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.

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.

Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.

He had a face like a blessing.

There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots.

Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched.

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

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

God bears with the wicked, but not forever.

Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.

I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea.

To be prepared is half the victory.

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.