Don Quixote

By Miguel de Cervantes QUOTATION: The Knight of the Doleful Countenance.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish author. Don Quixote, pt. 1, ch. 19 and passim (1605).

QUOTATION: Every man is the son of his own works.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Don Quixote, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, bk. 1, ch. 4, trans. by P. Motteux (1605).

QUOTATION: Mere flim-flam stories, and nothing but shams and lies.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, bk. 3, ch. 11 (1605), trans. by P. Motteux.

QUOTATION: Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Don Quixote, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, bk. 5, ch. 8, trans. by P. Motteux (1615).

QUOTATION: A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish author. Don Quixote, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, ch. 22 (1615), trans. by P. Motteux.

QUOTATION: There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Don Quixote, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, bk. 1, ch. 8 (1605), trans. by P. Motteux.

QUOTATION: Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Don Quixote, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, bk. 4, ch. 2, trans by P. Motteux (1605).

QUOTATION: 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.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish author. Don Quixote, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, ch. 43 (1615).

QUOTATION: Modesty, ‘tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Don Quixote, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, bk. 5, ch. 18, trans. by P. Motteux (1615).

QUOTATION: When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Don Quixote’s advice to Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, bk. 6, ch. 9, trans. by P. Motteux (1615).

QUOTATION: Virtue is the truest nobility.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Trans. by P. Motteux. Dorothea, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, bk. 4, ch. 9 (1605).

QUOTATION: What I say is, patience, and shuffle the cards.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish author. Durandarte, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, ch. 23 (1615), trans. by P. Motteux.

QUOTATION: A closed mouth catches no flies.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Trans. by P. Motteux. Italian proverb quoted by Sancho Panza in Don Quixote, bk. 3, ch. 11, pt. 1 (1605).

QUOTATION: ‘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.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Leonela, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, bk. 4, ch. 7, trans. by P. Motteux (1605).

QUOTATION: He ... had a face like a blessing.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish author. Peter, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, ch. 4 (1605), trans. by P. Motteux.

QUOTATION: There’s no taking trout with dry breeches.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Sancho, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, ch. 71, trans. by P. Motteux (1615).

QUOTATION: ‘Tis a dainty thing to command, though ‘twere but a flock of sheep.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, bk. 6, ch. 9, trans. by P. Motteux (1615).

QUOTATION: Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown; all’s fish that comes to his net; he throws at all, and sweeps stakes; he’s no mower that takes a nap at noon- day, but drives on, fair weather or foul, and cuts down the green grass as well as the ripe corn: he’s neither squeamish nor queesy-stomach’d, for he swallows without chewing, and crams down all things into his ungracious maw; and tho’ you can see no belly he has, he has a confounded dropsy, and thirsts after men’s lives, which he guggles down like mother’s milk.
ATTRIBUTION: Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer. Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote, pt. 2, bk. 5, ch. 20, trans. by P. Motteux (1615).