Top 500 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

102. “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

103. “In hell there is no retention.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

106. “A closed mouth catches no flies.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

109. “It is good to live and learn.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

110. “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

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

117. “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

118. “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

119. “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

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

121. “Sing away sorrow, cast away care.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

122. “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

123. “We are all as God made us and frequently much worse.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— 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. “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

131. “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

132. “Thou hast seen nothing yet.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

134. “Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

136. “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

137. “Maybe the greatest madness is to see life as it is rather than what it could be.”

— 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. “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

140. “Behind the cross is the devil.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

141. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

142. “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

143. “There is nothing costs less than civility.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

144. “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

145. “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

146. “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

147. “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

148. “Be slow of tongue and quick of eye.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

149. “Love is invisible and comes and goes where it wants, without anyone asking about it.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

150. “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