Miguel de Cervantes Literature Quotations

The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.

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

Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.

It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.

Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.

Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

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.

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

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

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.

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.

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

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.

Be a terror to the butchers, that they may be fair in their weight; and keep hucksters and fraudulent dealers in awe, for the same reason.

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

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.

Fair and softly goes far.

Thou hast seen nothing yet.