Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet, and dramatist. He is widely regarded as not only the greatest writer in the Spanish language but also as one of the world’s pre-eminent novelists. His masterpiece Don Quixote has been translated into more languages than any other book except the Bible.
Born in Alcalá de Henares near Madrid, Cervantes became a highly committed professional soldier. His patriotic career included fighting at the Battle of Lepanto (1571,) where he was wounded and lost for life the use of his left hand. Pirates took him in 1575, and he spent five years as a prisoner at Algiers. Subsequently, he served as a government agent who, desperately struggling to earn a living, turned to write plays and romances.
Cervantes’s first attempt at fiction was a pastoral romance La Galatea (1585,) which was followed by his masterpiece, Don Quixote—published in two volumes, Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) is an excellent archetype of Western fiction: the unlikely hero—an impoverished country gentleman—who goes mad from reading too much and decides to put the world to rights by becoming a knight-errant.
The first part of Don Quixote was published to immediate Spanish acclaim in 1605. However, Cervantes made many powerful enemies among those who worried that Quixote was a satire of themselves. Cervantes died one year after publishing Part 2 in 1615, just one day before Shakespeare died.
By the 19th century, Don Quixote was no longer viewed as a comic novel, but instead as a philosophical one devoted to uncovering the nature of human identity in the battle between self and society. Cervantes’s synthesis of the epic and dramatic genres into a new form that evolved into the modern novel, and the characters that he created, along with their obsessions, have entered the deepest level of our culture. Don Quixote was revered by such writers as Laurence Sterne, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gustave Flaubert, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, and Herman Melville.
Cervantes’s other works include two surviving plays and a collection of short stories, Novelas Ejemplares (1613; Exemplary Stories) and a tale of adventure, Persiles y Sigismunda, published posthumously in 1617.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Miguel de Cervantes
Liberty-is one of the choicest gifts that heaven hath bestowed upon man, and exceeds in volume all the treasures which the earth contains within its bosom or the sea covers. Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it, life in insupportable.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Liberty
He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he who loses his courage loses all.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Virtues, Bravery, Friend, Age, Courage
I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Proverbial Wisdom, Proverbs
He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Foolishness, Fools
Unseasonable mirth always turns to sorrow.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Though I am an inn-keeper, thank heaven I am a Christian.
—Miguel de Cervantes
He who has the judge for his father goes into court with an easy mind.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Judgment
He had a face like a blessing.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Faces, Face
A person dishonored is worst than dead.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Honor
He had a face like a benediction.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Face
When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Law, Lawyers
Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Life
Sing away sorrow, cast away care.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Worry
Do but take care to express yourself in a plain, easy Manner, in well-chosen, significant and decent Terms, and to give a harmonious and pleasing Turn to your Periods: study to explain your Thoughts, and set them in the truest Light, labouring as much as possible, not to leave them dark nor intricate, but clear and intelligible.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Communication
There’s no taking trout with dry breeches.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Effort
I am of opinion that there are no proverbial sayings which are not true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, who is the mother of all sciences.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Proverbs
To be prepared is half the victory.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Planning
A man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Friendship, Friends and Friendship
Too much sanity may be madness. But maddest of all, to see life as it is, and not as it should be.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Vision
There’s no sauce in the world like hunger
—Miguel de Cervantes
Under a bad cloak there is often a good drinker
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Drinking
The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune’s spite; revive from ashes and rise.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Hope
The bow cannot possibly always stand bent, nor can human nature or human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.
—Miguel de Cervantes
By the streets of “by and by,” one arrives at the house of “never.”
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Procrastination, Future, The Future
Treason pleases, but not the traitor.
—Miguel de Cervantes
The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Planning
An honest man’s word is as good as his bonds.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Honesty, Words
‘Tis a dainty thing to command, though ’twere but a flock of sheep.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Leadership, Leaders
Jests that give pains are no jests.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Humor
Fair and softly goes far.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Kindness
Three things too much, and three too little are pernicious to man; to speak much, and know little; to spend much, and have little; to presume much, and be worth little.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Man
Poetry, good sir, in my opinion, is like a tender virgin, very young, and extremely beautiful, whom divers others virgins—namely, all the other sciences—make it their business to enrich, polish and adorn; and to her it belongs to make use of them all, and on her part to give a lustre to them all.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Poetry
Short sentences drawn from long experiences.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Proverbs
The eyes those silent tongues of love.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Face, Faces
And for the citation of so many authors, ’tis the easiest thing in nature. Find out one of these books with an alphabetical index, and without any farther ceremony, remove it verbatim into your own… there are fools enough to be thus drawn into an opinion of the work; at least, such a flourishing train of attendants will give your book a fashionable air, and recommend it for sale.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Plagiarism
Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Laziness
Be brief, for no talk can please when too long. Being prepared is half the victory.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Victory
Sorrow was made for man, not for beasts; yet if men encourage melancholy too much, they become no better than beasts.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Sorrow
Every man is the son of his own works.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Work
One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Endurance
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