Top 500 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “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

102. “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

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

104. “Every man is the son of his own works.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

105. “A closed mouth catches no flies.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

106. “Many go out for wool, and come home shorn themselves.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

107. “Though Gods attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

108. “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

109. “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

110. “In hell there is no retention.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

111. “There’s no taking trout with dry breeches.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

112. “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

113. “Let us forget and forgive injuries.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

114. “Get out of harms way.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

116. “Great expectations are better than a poor possession.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

117. “Good wits jump; a word to the wise is enough.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

119. “God helps everyone with what is his own.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

120. “Your grace, come back, Senor Don Quixote, I swear to God you’re charging sheep !”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

121. “I’ll turn over a new leaf.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

122. “He had a face like a blessing.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

123. “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

124. “Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

125. “God exalts the man who humbles himself.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

126. “No hay memoria a quien el tiempo no acabe, ni dolor que muerte no le consuma.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

127. “Let every man mind his own business.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

128. “Well-gotten wealth may lose itself, but the ill-gotten loses its master also.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

129. “When good luck knocks at the door, let him in and keep him there.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

130. “Urgent necessity prompts many to do things.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

131. “I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

132. “The person who possesses wealth is not made happy by having it but by spending it, and not spending it haphazardly but in knowing how to spend it well.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

133. “Every man is the child of his own deeds.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

134. “I search for life in dread death, in fearful disease for health, in dark prison for liberty, escape in a sealed room, in a traitor, loyalty. But my own fate from whom I ne’er hope for the good has with just heaven ruled: if the impossible I demand, for me the possible is banned.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

135. “With life many things are remedied.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

136. “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

137. “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

138. “There’s no sauce in the world like hunger.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

139. “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

140. “The stomach carries the heart, and not the heart the stomach.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

141. “A tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

142. “The eating. By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece...”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

143. “Heaven’s help is better than early rising.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

144. “Those who’ll play with cats must expect to be scratched.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

145. “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

146. “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

147. “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

148. “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

149. “Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

150. “Sancho Panza by name is my own self, if I was not changed in my cradle.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra