The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, or just Don Quixote, is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled “the first modern novel” and many authors consider it to be the best literary work ever written. Profoundly inspirational Don Quixote quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
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Famous Don Quixote Quotes
He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more, but he that loses his courage loses all. Miguel de Cervantes
Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Love is a power too strong to be overcome by anything but flight. Miguel de Cervantes
The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn. Miguel de Cervantes
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness and maddest of all to see life as it is, and not as it should be! Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd. Miguel de Cervantes
There is no book so bad that it does not have something good in it. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be. Miguel de Cervantes
There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
How will he who does not know how to govern himself know how to govern others? Miguel de Cervantes
For neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand. Cervantes
Believe there are no limits but the sky. Miguel de Cervantes
Hunger is the best sauce in the world. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
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
Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth. What giants? Asked Sancho Panza. The ones you can see over there, answered his master, with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long. Now look, your grace, said Sancho, what you see over there aren’t giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone. Obviously, replied Don Quijote, you don’t know much about adventures. Miguel de Cervantes
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Miguel de Cervantes
Until death it is all life. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Love not what you are but only what you may become. Miguel de Cervantes
Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Every man is the son of his own works. Miguel de Cervantes
Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. Miguel de Cervantes
What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman’s mind? Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
A good name is better than bags of gold. Miguel de Cervantes
I do not deny that what happened to us is a thing worth laughing at. But it is not worth telling, for not everyone is sufficiently intelligent to be able to see things from the right point of view. Cervantes
God exalts the man who humbles himself. Miguel de Cervantes
Wit and humor do not reside in slow minds. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Many littles make a much. Miguel de Cervantes
Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
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
A bad year and a bad month to all the backbiting bitches in the world! Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Facts are the enemy of truth. Miguel de Cervantes
It is not the responsibility of knights errant to discover whether the afflicted, the enchained and the oppressed whom they encounter on the road are reduced to these circumstances and suffer this distress for their vices, or for their virtues the knight’s sole responsibility is to succour them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds. Miguel de Cervantes
The road to the inn is much better than the stay. Miguel de Cervantes
The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Virtue is the truest nobility. Miguel de Cervantes
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. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
To be good to the vile is to throw water into the sea. Miguel de Cervantes
Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Seek for good, but expect evil. Miguel de Cervantes
The wounds received in battle bestow honor, they do not take it away. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Let us make hay while the sun shines. Miguel de Cervantes
A tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Maybe the greatest madness is to see life as it is rather than what it could be. Miguel de Cervantes
It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last. Miguel de Cervantes
Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
One of the effects of fear is to disturb the senses and cause things to appear other than what they are. Miguel de Cervantes
The fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The wicked are always ungrateful. Miguel de Cervantes
They must take me for a fool, or even worse, a lunatic. And no wonder ,for I am so intensely conscious of my misfortune and my misery is so overwhelming that I am powerless to resist it and am being turned into stone, devoid of all knowledge or feeling. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Be not under the dominion of thine own will; it is the vice of the ignorant, who vainly presume on their own understanding. Miguel de Cervantes
She wanted, with her fickleness, to make my destruction constant; I want, by trying to destroy myself, to satisfy her desire. Miguel De Cervantes
Give the devil his due. Miguel de Cervantes
What intelligent things you say sometimes! One would think you had studied. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
By the streets of by and by, one arrives at the house of never. Miguel de Cervantes
A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Be slow of tongue and quick of eye. Miguel de Cervantes
One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this. Miguel de Cervantes
Woman’s advice has little value, but he who won’t take it is a fool. Miguel de Cervantes
Where envy reigns virtue can’t exist, and generosity doesn’t go with meanness. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Until death it is all life. Miguel de Cervantes
Laughter distances us from that which is ugly and therefore potentially distressing, and indeed enables us to obtain paradoxical pleasure and therapeutic benefit from it. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Men of great talents, whether poets or historians, seldom escape the attacks of those who, without ever favoring the world with any production of their own, take delight in criticising the works of others. Miguel de Cervantes
To think that the affairs of this life always remain in the same state is a vain presumption; indeed they all seem to be perpetually changing and moving in a circular course. Spring is followed by summer, summer by autumn, and autumn by winter, which is again followed by spring, and so time continues its everlasting round. But the life of man is ever racing to its end, swifter than time itself, without hope of renewal, unless in the next that is limitless and infinite. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it. Miguel de Cervantes
He is most blessed who loves the most, the freest who is most enslaved by love. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works. Miguel de Cervantes
One man is no more than another, if he do no more than what another does. Cervantes Saavedra
A stout heart breaks bad luck. Miguel de Cervantes
In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind. Edith Grossman
Where envy reigns virtue can’t exist, and generosity doesn’t go with meanness. Miguel de Cervantes
