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
He who sings frightens away his ills.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Singing
By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Language
Man appoints, and God disappoints.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: God
Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Wisdom, Growth
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
Unseasonable mirth always turns to sorrow.
—Miguel de Cervantes
‘Tis a dainty thing to command, though ’twere but a flock of sheep.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
‘Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o’er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Death, Dying
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
Topics: Writing
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
Topics: Weight
All beauty does not inspire love; some beauties please the sign without captivating the affections.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Beauty
There’s no sauce in the world like hunger
—Miguel de Cervantes
Urgent necessity prompts many to do things.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Motivation
Sing away sorrow, cast away care.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Worry
Where one door closes, another opens.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Opportunity
Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things under ground, and much more in the skies.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
He had a face like a blessing.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Face, Faces
I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Luck
The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Success, Confidence, Work, Self-reliance, Fortune
Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Friendship
The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Planning
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
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
One of the effects of fear is to disturb the senses and cause things to appear other than what they are.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Fear
Mere flimflam stories, and nothing but shams and lies.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Vanity
She fights and vanquishes in me, and I live and breathe in her, and I have life and being.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Life
The most difficult character in comedy is that of a fool, and he must be no simpleton who plays the part.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Fools, Acting, Actors
The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Wealth
Thou hast seen nothing yet.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Possibilities, Potential
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Lope de Vega Spanish Playwright
Miguel de Unamuno Spanish Philosopher, Writer
Jacinto Benavente Spanish Dramatist
Bahya ibn Paquda Jewish Philosopher
George Santayana Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Pablo Picasso Spanish Painter
Graham Greene British Novelist
James Joyce Irish Novelist
Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist