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
Well, now there’s a remedy for everything except death.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Medicine
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
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
Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Aptness, Appropriateness, Reason
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
There’s no sauce in the world like hunger
—Miguel de Cervantes
Better a blush on the face than a blot on the heart.
—Miguel de Cervantes
When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Lawyers, Law
Let every man mind his own business.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Self-Discovery, Business
By the streets of “by and by,” one arrives at the house of “never.”
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Future, The Future, Procrastination
Soul of fibre and heart of oak.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Heart
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
All sorrows are less with bread.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Eating
There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or at least alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Inheritance
The stomach carries the heart, and not the heart the stomach.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Eating
Jests that give pains are no jests.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Humor
An honest man’s word is as good as his bonds.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Honesty, Words
Well, there’s a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Death, Dying
Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Persistence, Wishes, Fortune, Idleness, Perseverance
Nothing costs less, nor is cheaper, than the compliments of civility.
—Miguel de Cervantes
The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Wealth
Though God’s attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: God
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
Pray look better, Sir… those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Illusion
Absence—that common cure of love.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Absence
The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Self-reliance, Fortune, Success, Confidence, Work
No padlock, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden so well as her own reserve.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Discipline, Maidenhood
Man appoints, and God disappoints.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: God
Eat not garlic nor onions, lest they find out thy boorish origin by the smell; walk slowly and speak deliberately, but not in such a way as to make it seem thou art listening to thyself, for all affectation is bad. Dine sparingly and sup more sparingly still; for the health of the whole body is forged in the workshop of the stomach. Be temperate in drinking, bearing in mind that wine in excess keeps neither secrets nor promises. Take care, Sancho, not to chew on both sides, and not to eruct in anybody’s presence.
Eruct! said Sancho; I don’t know what that means.
To eruct, Sancho, said Don Quixote, means to belch, and that is one of the filthiest words in the Spanish language, though a very expressive one; and therefore nice folk have had recourse to the Latin, and instead of belch say eruct, and instead of belches say eructations; and if some do not understand these terms it matters little, for custom will bring them into use in the course of time, so that they will be readily understood; this is the way a language is enriched; custom and the public are all-powerful there.
In truth, senor, said Sancho, one of the counsels and cautions I mean to bear in mind shall be this, not to belch, for I’m constantly doing it.
Eruct, Sancho, not belch, said Don Quixote.
Eruct, I shall say henceforth, and I swear not to forget it, said Sancho.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Food
Experience is the universal mother of sciences.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Topics: Experience
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