Miguel de Cervantes

“Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.”

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.”

“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.”

“He who loses wealth loses much he who loses a friend loses more but he that loses his courage loses all.”

“Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.”

“Delay always breeds danger and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.”

“A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.”

“Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.”

“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.”

“Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.”

“To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.”

“God bears with the wicked, but not forever.”

“For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences.”

“There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.”

“The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.”

“Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.”

“That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.”

“No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.”

“Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.”

“Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.”

“Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.”

“Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.”

“There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.”

“Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.”