Top 500 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

152. “For if he like a madman lived; At least he like a wise one died.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

154. “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

155. “Behind the cross is the devil.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

157. “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

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

159. “Don Quixote did not sleep at all that night but thought of his lady Dulcinea, in order to conform to what he had read in his books of knights spending many sleepless nights in groves and meadows, turning all their thoughts to memories of their ladies.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

160. “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

161. “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

162. “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

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

165. “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

166. “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

167. “Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

168. “Great persons are able to do great kindnesses.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

169. “Comparisons are odious.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

170. “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

171. “There’s no love lost between us.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

172. “For me alone Don Quixote was born and I for him. His was the power of action, mine of writing.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

173. “Blessings on him, who invented sleep.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

174. “Quis talia fando temperet a lacrymis?”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

175. “Give the devil his due.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

176. “The ass bears the load, but not the overload.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

177. “A shy face is better than a forward heart.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

178. “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

179. “Make yourself honey and the flies will devour you.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

180. “Don’t put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

181. “Love and war are exactly alike. It is lawful to use tricks and slights to obtain a desired end.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

182. “Never meddle with play-actors, for they’re a favoured race.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

183. “All women are good – good for nothing, or good for something.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

184. “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

185. “The good governor should have a broken leg and keep at home.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

186. “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

187. “Well, now there’s a remedy for everything except death.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

188. “The treason pleases, but the traitors are odious.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

189. “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

190. “My heart is wax molded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

191. “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

192. “Soul of fibre and heart of oak.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

193. “Dine on little, and sup on less.”

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

196. “I’ve always heard the old folks say that if you don’t know how to enjoy good luck when it comes, you shouldn’t complain if it passes you by.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

197. “Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

198. “A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

199. “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

200. “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