MDMiguel De Cervantes

228 collected words

Miguel De Cervantes

Life dates: 1547 AD — 1616 AD

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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Quotations and sayings

01c. 1581 AD

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

Meaning: A benefit you already possess may be worth more than a larger benefit you only hope to obtain. Weigh a secure result against the chance of losing it.

02c. 1581 AD

More knave than fool.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

03c. 1581 AD

I can tell where my own shoe pinches me; and you must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

04c. 1581 AD

I never saw a more dreadful battle in my born days.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

05c. 1581 AD

Here is the devil-and-all to pay.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

06c. 1581 AD

I begin to smell a rat.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

07c. 1581 AD

I will take my corporal oath on it.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

08c. 1581 AD

It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

09c. 1581 AD

I would have nobody to control me; I would be absolute: and who but I? Now, he that is absolute can do what he likes; he that can do what he likes can take his pleasure; he that can take his pleasure can be content; and he that can be content has no more to desire. So the matter's over; and come what will come, I am satisfied.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

10c. 1581 AD

When the head aches, all the members partake of the pain.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

11c. 1581 AD

He has done like Orbaneja, the painter of Ubeda, who, being asked what he painted, answered, "As it may hit;" and when he had scrawled out a misshapen cock, was forced to write underneath, in Gothic letters, "This is a cock."

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

12c. 1581 AD

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 / quote

13c. 1581 AD

"There is no book so bad," said the bachelor, "but something good may be found in it."

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

14c. 1581 AD

Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

15c. 1581 AD

A little in one's own pocket is better than much in another man's purse.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

16c. 1581 AD

Remember the old saying, "Faint heart never won fair lady."

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

17c. 1581 AD

There is a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us out flat some time or other.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

18c. 1581 AD

Are we to mark this day with a white or a black stone?

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

19c. 1581 AD

Let every man look before he leaps.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

20c. 1581 AD

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

21c. 1581 AD

There were but two families in the world, Have-much and Have-little.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

22c. 1581 AD

He has an oar in every man's boat, and a finger in every pie.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

23c. 1581 AD

Patience, and shuffle the cards.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

24c. 1581 AD

Tell me thy company, and I will tell thee what thou art.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote