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
Pray look better, Sir… those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Illusion
I believe there’s no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Proverbs, Proverbial Wisdom
Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Hope
He preaches well that lives well.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Evangelism, Living, Preaching
Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Deeds, Action
Thou hast seen nothing yet.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Potential, Possibilities
Good Christians should never avenge injuries.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Vengeance, One liners
Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Friendship
Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Laziness
It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Happiness
Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Growth, Wisdom
Thou camest out of thy mother’s belly without government, thou hast liv’d hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look’d upon?
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Government
No man is more than another unless he does more than another.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Service
One who has not only the four S’s, which are required in every good lover, but even the whole alphabet; as for example… Agreeable, Bountiful, Constant, Dutiful, Easy, Faithful, Gallant, Honorable, Ingenious, Kind, Loyal, Mild, Noble, Officious, Prudent, Quiet, Rich, Secret, True, Valiant, Wise; the X indeed, is too harsh a letter to agree with him, but he is Young and Zealous.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Lovers, Love
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
Jests that give pains are no jests.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Humor
Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Freedom
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
Under a bad cloak there is often a good drinker
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Drinking
Valour lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Courage, Safety, Prudence, Risk
‘Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Love
One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Service, Servants
Beauty in a modest woman is like fire at a distance, or a sharp sword beyond reach.—The one does not burn, or the other wound those that come not too near them.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Beauty
Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Truth
He had a face like a benediction.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Face
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
Topics: Parenting, Revenge, Parents
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
A blot in thy escutcheon to all futurity.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Posterity, History
You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch in his throne.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Government, Home
Every tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.
—Miguel de Cervantes
A stout heart breaks bad luck.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Luck, Fortune
Mere flimflam stories, and nothing but shams and lies.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Vanity
Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Life
Short sentences drawn from long experiences.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Proverbs
Good painters imitate nature, bad ones spew it up.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Art, Painting, Painters
Soul of fibre and heart of oak.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Heart
By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Language
The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Planning
The bow cannot possibly always stand bent, nor can human nature or human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.
—Miguel de Cervantes
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