Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world’s pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel and “the first great novel of world literature”.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Quotes

1. “El que lee mucho y anda mucho, ve mucho y sabe mucho.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

2. “Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

3. “Believe there are no limits but the sky.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

4. “Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

5. “The proof of the pudding is the eating.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

6. “Honesty’s the best policy.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

7. “Until death it is all life.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

8. “The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

9. “Facts are the enemy of truth.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

10. “The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune’s spite; revive from ashes and rise.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

11. “I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

12. “In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

13. “He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

14. “Where one door shuts another opens.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

15. “Wit and humor do not reside in slow minds.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

16. “Thank you for nothing.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

17. “All sorrows are less with bread.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

18. “Where there’s music there can be no evil.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

19. “Let us make hay while the sun shines.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

20. “Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

21. “Diligence is the mother of good fortune.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

22. “Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

23. “Every dog has his day.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

24. “He who sings scares away his woes.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

25. “They who lose today may win tomorrow.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

26. “Do not eat garlic or onions; for their smell will reveal that you are a peasant.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

27. “A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

28. “The man who fights for his ideals is alive.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

29. “Tomorrow will be a new day.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

30. “Love is a power too strong to be overcome by anything but flight.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

31. “Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

32. “For neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

33. “Beware, gentle knight – the greatest monster of them all is reason.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

34. “Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

35. “Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

36. “The pen is the tongue of the soul; as are the thoughts engendered there, so will be the things written.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

37. “I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

38. “Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

39. “Virtue is the truest nobility.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

40. “It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

41. “There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

42. “Blessed be he who invented sleep, a cloak that covers all a man’s thoughts.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

43. “What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman’s mind?”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

44. “Hunger is the best sauce in the world.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

45. “Patience and shuffle the cards.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

46. “He preaches well that lives well.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

47. “Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it goes ill with the pitcher.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

48. “One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

49. “The worst reconciliation is better than the best divorce.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

50. “That which we are capable of feeling, we are capable of saying.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

51. “Among the attributes of God, although they are equal, mercy shines with even more brilliance than justice.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

52. “The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

53. “Fair and softly goes far.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

54. “Experience is the universal mother of sciences.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

55. “A great man who is vicious will be a great example of vice and a rich man who is not generous will be merely a miserly beggar, for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it but by spending it, and not by spending it as he pleases but by knowing how to spend it well.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

56. “Sorrow was made for man, not for beasts; yet if men encourage melancholy too much, they become no better than beasts.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

57. “Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

58. “En un lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme…”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

59. “Sleep is the best cure for waking troubles.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

60. “Como no estas experimentado en las cosas del mundo, todas las cosas que tienen algo de dificultad te parecen imposibles.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

61. “Amor y deseo son dos cosas diferentes; que no todo lo que se ama se desea, ni todo lo que se desea se ama.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

62. “To dream the impossible dream, that is my quest.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

63. “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 Saavedra

64. “An honest man’s word is as good as his bond.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

65. “There is remedy for all things except death – Don Quixote De La Mancha.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

66. “There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

67. “I never thrust my nose into other men’s porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine; every man for himself, and God for us all.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

68. “The eyes those silent tongues of love.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

69. “Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large, of dwarfs giants, of suspicions truths.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

70. “Fortune may have yet a better success in reserve for you and they who lose today may win tomorrow.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

71. “It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

72. “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

73. “Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

74. “You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch in his throne.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

75. “The reason for the unreason with which you treat my reason, so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of your beauty.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

76. “I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

77. “There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

78. “Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

79. “A knowledge of thyself will preserve thee from vanity.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

80. “My reason is now free and clear, rid of the dark shadows of ignorance that my unhappy constant study of those detestable books of chivalry cast over it. Now I see through their absurdities and deceptions, and it only grieves me that this destruction of my illusions has come so late that it leaves me no time to make some amends by reading other books that might be a light to my soul.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

81. “Digo, paciencia y barajar. What I say is, patience, and shuffle the cards.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

82. “The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

83. “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

84. “Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

85. “It is courage that vanquishes in war, and not good weapons.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

86. “The wicked are always ungrateful.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

87. “Love not what you are but only what you may become.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

88. “One of the effects of fear is to disturb the senses and cause things to appear other than what they are.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

89. “The beauty of some women has days and seasons, depending upon accidents which diminish or increase it; nay, the very passions of the mind naturally improve or impair it, and very often utterly destroy it.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

90. “Happy the man to whom heaven has given a morsel of bread without laying him under the obligation of thanking any other for it than heaven itself.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

91. “Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

92. “Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

93. “Many go out for wool, and come home shorn themselves.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

94. “Leap out of the frying pan into the fire.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

95. “The cleverest character in comedy is the clown, for he who would make people take him for a fool, must not be one.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

96. “A knight errant who turns mad for a reason deserves neither merit nor thanks. The thing is to do it without cause.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

97. “Though Gods attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

98. “In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

99. “In hell there is no retention.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

100. “Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

101. “There’s no taking trout with dry breeches.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

102. “Your grace, come back, Senor Don Quixote, I swear to God you’re charging sheep !”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

103. “It is good to live and learn.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

104. “A closed mouth catches no flies.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

105. “God exalts the man who humbles himself.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

106. “Good wits jump; a word to the wise is enough.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

107. “Well, there’s a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

108. “Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

109. “Let every man mind his own business.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

110. “Well-gotten wealth may lose itself, but the ill-gotten loses its master also.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

111. “No hay memoria a quien el tiempo no acabe, ni dolor que muerte no le consuma.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

112. “Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it; for freedom, as for honour, life may and should be ventured; and on the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can fall to the lot of man.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

113. “Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. Yet from this lesson thou will learn to avoid the frog’s foolish ambition of swelling to rival the bigness of the ox.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

114. “That is the nature of women,” said Don Quixote. “They reject the man who loves them and love the man who despises them.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

115. “There’s no sauce in the world like hunger.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

116. “Sing away sorrow, cast away care.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

117. “Man appoints, and God disappoints.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

118. “The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

119. “The stomach carries the heart, and not the heart the stomach.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

120. “We are all as God made us and frequently much worse.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

121. “A tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

122. “Heaven’s help is better than early rising.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

123. “The eating. By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece…”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

124. “Those who’ll play with cats must expect to be scratched.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

125. “I do not deny that what happened to us is a thing worth laughing at. But it is not worth telling, for not everyone is sufficiently intelligent to be able to see things from the right point of view.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

126. “Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

127. “Thou hast seen nothing yet.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

128. “Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

129. “The fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

130. “Sancho Panza by name is my own self, if I was not changed in my cradle.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

131. “I want you to see me naked and performing one or two dozen mad acts, which will take me less than half an hour, because if you have seen them with your own eyes, you can safely swear to any others you might wish to add.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

132. “Maybe the greatest madness is to see life as it is rather than what it could be.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

133. “History is the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instructor of the present, and monitor to the future.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

134. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

135. “Behind the cross is the devil.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

136. “There is nothing costs less than civility.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

137. “Love is invisible and comes and goes where it wants, without anyone asking about it.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

138. “For if he like a madman lived; At least he like a wise one died.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

139. “She wanted, with her fickleness, to make my destruction constant; I want, by trying to destroy myself, to satisfy her desire.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

140. “Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

141. “Be slow of tongue and quick of eye.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

142. “Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do is this life is to let himself die.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

143. “Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

144. “No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

145. “All kinds of beauty do not inspire love; there is a kind which only pleases the sight, but does not captivate the affections.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

146. “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.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

147. “Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

148. “Great persons are able to do great kindnesses.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

149. “For me alone Don Quixote was born and I for him. His was the power of action, mine of writing.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

150. “Blessings on him, who invented sleep.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

151. “There’s no love lost between us.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

152. “Can we ever have too much of a good thing?”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

153. “A shy face is better than a forward heart.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

154. “Comparisons are odious.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

155. “Give the devil his due.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

156. “Never meddle with play-actors, for they’re a favoured race.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

157. “It is a true saying that a man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

158. “All women are good – good for nothing, or good for something.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

159. “The ass bears the load, but not the overload.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

160. “Don’t put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

161. “Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

162. “But do not give it to a lawyer’s clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

163. “Make yourself honey and the flies will devour you.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

164. “Well, now there’s a remedy for everything except death.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

165. “The treason pleases, but the traitors are odious.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

166. “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 Saavedra

167. “Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

168. “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 Saavedra

169. “Dine on little, and sup on less.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

170. “History is in a manner a sacred thing, so far as it contains truth; for where truth is, the supreme Father of it may also be said to be, at least, inasmuch as concerns truth.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

171. “Soul of fibre and heart of oak.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

172. “My heart is wax molded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

173. “The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

174. “Get out of harms way.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

175. “The good governor should have a broken leg and keep at home.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

176. “Every man is the son of his own works.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

177. “It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

178. “One swallow alone does not make a summer.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

179. “Great expectations are better than a poor possession.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

180. “A good joke, that!” returned Don Quixote. “Books that have been printed with the king’s licence, and with the approbation of those to whom they have been submitted, and read with universal delight, and extolled by great and small, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, gentle and simple, in a word by people of every sort, of whatever rank or condition they may be – that these should be lies!”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

181. “A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

182. “The woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself be so even amidst an army of soldiers.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

183. “It will be seen in the frying of the eggs.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

184. “The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

185. “Let us forget and forgive injuries.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

186. “Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

187. “Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep. It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

188. “Troubles take wing for the man who can sing.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

189. “Laughter distances us from that which is ugly and therefore potentially distressing, and indeed enables us to obtain paradoxical pleasure and therapeutic benefit from it.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

190. “That’s the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

191. “That which costs little is less valued.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

192. “To be good to the vile is to throw water into the sea.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

193. “The foolish sayings of the rich pass for wise saws in society.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

194. “I’m a peaceful, mild, and quiet man, and I know how to conceal any insult because I have a wife and children to support and care for.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

195. “A blot in thy escutcheon to all futurity.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

196. “Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

197. “To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there’s more reason to fear than to hope.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

198. “This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair’s breadth from the truth in the telling of it.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

199. “God helps everyone with what is his own.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

200. “What is bought is cheaper than a gift.”
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra