Miguel De Cervantes

The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.

Patience and shuffle the cards.

It's up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they're going well ... For I've heard that what they call fortune is a flighty woman who drinks too much, and, what's more, she's blind, so she can't see what she's doing, and she doesn't know who she's knocking over or who she's raising up.

When the head aches, all the members partake of the pain.

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

If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.

A silly remark can be made in Latin as well as in Spanish.

Great persons are able to do great kindnesses.

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.

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.

There are but few proverbial sayings that are not true, for they are all drawn from experience itself, which is the mother of all sciences.

He who sings frightens away his ills.

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

For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.

Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.

The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.

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

No man is more than another unless he does more than another.

A wise man does not trust all his eggs to one basket.

"He preaches well that lives well," quoth Sancho, "that's all the divinity I can understand."

Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.