Miguel de Cervantes quotes
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616): Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. The library holds 168 quotes by Miguel de Cervantes, drawn from Don Quixote, The Little Gypsy (La Gitanilla), Don Quixote. The Author’s Preface. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, time, faith, nature, truth, art
The best-known Miguel de Cervantes quotes
-
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iv. Chap. iv -
Let us make hay while the sun shines.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. xi -
An honest man’s word is as good as his bond.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxxiii -
Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.
-
Diligence is the mother of good fortune.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xliii -
No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.
-
Don’t put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.
The Little Gypsy (La Gitanilla) -
Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. lxxiv -
Rome was not built in a day.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. lxxi -
Many go out for wool, and come home shorn themselves.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxxvii -
There is a remedy for everything but death.
-
The pot calls the kettle black.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xliii -
History is like sacred writing, for truth is essential to it.
-
All kinds of beauty do not inspire love: there is a kind of it which pleases only the sight, but does not captivate the affections.
-
Riches are of little avail in many of the calamities to which mankind are liable.
-
Let me leap out of the frying-pan into the fire; or, out of God’s blessing into the warm sun.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. iv -
It is a fine thing to command, though it were but a herd of cattle.
-
Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things under ground, and much more in the skies.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. vi -
Liberty is one of the most precious gifts that Heaven has bestowed on man, and captivity is the greatest evil that can befall him.
-
Building castles in the air, and making yourself a laughing-stock.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxxi -
Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. iv -
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.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. xi -
After meat comes mustard; or, like money to a starving man at sea, when there are no victuals to be bought with it.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. viii -
True valour lies in the middle between cowardice and rashness.
-
Would puzzle a convocation of casuists to resolve their degrees of consanguinity.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. viii -
The army is a school in which the niggardly become generous and the generous prodigal.
-
I know what’s what, and have always taken care of the main chance.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. ix -
Falsehood is so much the more commendable, by how much more it resembles truth, and is the more pleasing the more it is doubtful and possible.
-
When a man says, “Get out of my house! what would you have with my wife?” there is no answer to be made.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xliii -
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.
-
The ass will carry his load, but not a double load; ride not a free horse to death.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. lxxi -
Steward or deputy may do well: but the lord himself is obliged to stir in the administration of justice.
-
Liberty… is one of the most valuable blessings that Heaven has bestowed upon mankind.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. lviii -
There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxxv -
“There is no book so bad,” said the bachelor, “but something good may be found in it.”
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. iii -
He has an oar in every man’s boat, and a finger in every pie.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxii -
It will grieve me so to the heart, that I shall cry my eyes out.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. xi -
There were but two families in the world, Have-much and have-little.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xx -
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.
-
Remember the old saying, “Faint heart never won fair lady.”
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. x -
I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxxiii -
Every one is as God made him, and often a great deal worse.
-
Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.
-
There are but two families in the world, those who have, and those who have not.
-
I can look sharp as well as another, and let me alone to keep the cobwebs out of my eyes.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxxiii -
I can tell where my own shoe pinches me; and you must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iv. Chap. v -
She may guess what I should perform in the wet, if I do so much in the dry.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. xi -
It is better for the man whom God helps than for him who rises early.
-
Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall man.
-
Happy the man to whom Heaven has given a morsel of bread without his being obliged to thank any other for it than Heaven itself.
-
My thoughts ran a wool-gathering; and I did like the countryman who looked for his ass while he was mounted on his back.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. lvii -
The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the son of his own works.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book i. Chap. iv -
It is better to live on the crust of your own industry than on the fruits of other people’s.
-
There is a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us out flat some time or other.
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. x -
By the streets of “By and By” one arrives at the house of “Never.”
-
Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.
-
The pleasure which strikes the soul must be derived from the beauty and congruity it sees or conceives in those things which the sight or imagination lay before it.
-
My heart is wax moulded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain.
The Little Gypsy (La Gitanilla) -
Since we have a good loaf, let us not look for cheesecakes.
-
It is the part of a wise man to keep himself to-day for to-morrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.
Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. ix
Where these quotes come from
- Don Quixote (103 quotes)
- The Little Gypsy (La Gitanilla) (2 quotes)
- Don Quixote. The Author’s Preface (2 quotes)
Every quote comes from a public-domain edition. How the library was made .