Top 500 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Face, I cannot bear with patience some of the things your Grace says. They are enough to make me suspect that all you have told me about knighthood and winning kingdoms and empires, of bestowing islands and giving me other favors and honors according to the customs of chivalry must all be hot air and lies, and all a cock and bull story or cock and ball story or whatsoever you term it.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

352. “Friends, whoe’er ye be that are immured in that prison, forgive me that, to my misfortune and yours, I cannot deliver you from your misery;.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

353. “I find my familiarity with thee has bred contempt.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

354. “Too much sanity may be madness.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

355. “For the army is a school in which the miser becomes generous, and the generous prodigal; miserly soldiers are like monsters, but very rarely seen.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

356. “A little in one’s own pocket is better than much in another man’s purse.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

357. “Having cleaned his armor and made a full helmet out of a simple headpiece, and having given a name to his horse and decided on one for himself, he realized that the only thing left for him to do was to find a lady to love; for the knight errant without a lady-love was a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

359. “Folly is wont to have more followers and comrades than discretion.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

360. “One should not talk of hatters in the house of the hanged.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

361. “No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden better than her own reserve.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

362. “And thus, from too little sleep and too much reading, his brain dried up and he completely lost his judgment.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

363. “Nor has his death the world deceiv’d than his wondrous life surprise d; if he like a madman liv’d least he like a wise one dy’d.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

364. “Here, then, I say is what the student has to undergo; first of all poverty:.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

365. “All persons are not discreet enough to know how to take things by the right handle.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

366. “It is better that a judge should lean on the side of compassion than severity.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

367. “So it isn’t the masses who are to blame for demanding rubbish, but rather those who aren’t capable of providing them with anything else.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

368. “It requires a long time to know anyone.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

369. “There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

370. “I would do what I pleased, and doing what I pleased, I should have my will, and having my will, I should be contented; and when one is contented, there is no more to be desired; and when there is no more to be desired, there is an end of it.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

371. “Old, that’s an affront no woman can well bear.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

372. “Evil comes not amiss if it comes alone.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

373. “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.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

374. “Remember that I’m old enough to give advice, and the advice I’m giving you now is exactly right, and a bird in the hand is better than a vulture in the air,...”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

375. “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.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

376. “For men may prove and use their friends, as the poet expresses it, usque ad aras, meaning that a friend should not be required to act contrary to the law of God.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

377. “When we are asleep, we are all equal.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

378. “A person dishonored is worst than dead.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

379. “There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

380. “Little said is soon amended.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

381. “Let every man look before he leaps.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

382. “Seek for good, but expect evil.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

383. “Don’t you be worried or annoyed, Sancho, about any comments you hear, or there will never be an end to them. Keep a safe conscience and let people say what they like: trying to still gossips’ tongues is like putting up doors in open fields. If the governor leaves office rich they say he’s a thief, and if he leaves it poor they say he’s a milksop and a fool.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

384. “Abundance, even of good things, prevents them from being valued.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

385. “Every one in his own house and God in all of them.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

386. “Tis a dainty thing to command, though ’twere but a flock of sheep.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

387. “According to an ancient and common tradition in the kingdom of Great Britain, this king did not die, but was transformed into a raven by the art of enchantment and, in the course of time, he shall return to rule again and regain his kingdom and his scepter.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

388. “But my thoughts ran a wool-gathering; and I did like the countryman, who looked for his ass while he was mounted on his back.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

389. “Since Cervantes’s magnificent Knight’s quest has cosmological scope and reverberation, no object seems beyond reach.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

390. “And thus being totally preoccupied, he rode so slowly that the sun was soon glowing with such intense heat that it would have melted his brains, if he’d had any.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

391. “We know already ample experience that it does not require much cleverness or much learning to be a governor, for there are a hundred round about us that scarcely know how to read.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

392. “Jests that give pains are no jests.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

393. “Whoever is ignorant is vulgar.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

394. “All I know is that so long I am asleep I am rid of all fears and hopes and toils and glory, and long live the man who invented sleep, the cloak that covers all human thirst.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

395. “And indeed, if the truth is to be told, what I eat in my corner without form or fuss has much more relish for me, even though it be bread and onions, than the turkeys of those other tables where I am forced to chew slowly, drink little, wipe my mouth every minute, and cannot sneeze or cough if I want or do other things that are the privileges of liberty and solitude.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

396. “I can tell where my own shoe pinches me.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

397. “I had rather munch a crust of brown bread and an onion in a corner, without any more ado, or ceremony, than feed upon turkey at another man’s table.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

398. “Let everyone turn himself around, and look at home, and he will find enough to do.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

399. “I know what’s what, and have always taken care of the main chance.”

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra