Poets From Spain

"I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth."

"Let us forget and forgive injuries."

"Think before thou speakest."

"In me the need to talk is a primary impulse, and I can't help saying right off what comes to my tongue."

"Delay always breeds danger."

"My honor is dearer to me than my life."

"Ready to split his sides with laughing."

"My memory is so bad that many times I forget my own name."

"Let each man say what he chooses; if because of this I am criticized by the ignorant, I shall not be chastised by the learned."

"Thou hast seen nothing yet."

"It will grieve me so to the heart, that I shall cry my eyes out."

"You are a devil at everything, and there is no kind of thing in the 'versal world but what you can turn your hand to."

"My lady can guess what I would do in the wet if I do all this in the dry."

"A knight errant who turns mad for a reason deserves neither merit nor thanks. The thing is to do it without cause."

"A close mouth catches no flies."

"Little said is soonest mended."

"I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine; every man for himself, and God for us all."

"Let us make hay while the sun shines."

"From pro's and con's they fell to a warmer way of disputing."

"Absence, that common cure of love."

"The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me."

"Within a stone's throw of it."

"I am almost frighted out of my seven senses."

"The ease of my burdens, the staff of my life."

"I know what's what, and have always taken care of the main chance."

"To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there is more reason to fear than to hope. 'Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket. And though I am but a clown, or a bumpkin, as you may say, yet I would have you to know I know what is what, and have always taken care of the main chance..."

"To do good to villains is to pour water into the sea."

"Raise a hue and cry."

"The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to make oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule."

"Is there a better book about dreaming oneself into a new life?"

"It will probably never be possible to prove that Cervantes was a cristiano nuevo, but the circumstantial evidence seems compelling. The Instruccion written by Fernan Diaz de Toledo in the mid-fifteenth century lists the Cervantes family as among the many noble clans of Spain that were of converso origin."

"Of all the books of fiction, I know none that equals Cervantes's History of Don Quixote in usefulness, pleasantry, and a constant decorum."

"No limits but the sky."

"Fair and softly goes far."

"Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy."

"It is a true saying that a man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him."

"The soldier who executes his captain's commands is no less valuable than the captain who gave the order."

"Without a wink of sleep."

"There's not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault."

"The eyes those silent tongues of Love."

"Those two fatal words, Mine and Thine."

"The charging of his enemy was but the work of a moment."

"Take care, Your Worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills."

"Can we ever have too much of a good thing?"

"Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched."

"Thou art a cat, and a rat, and a coward."

"Murder will out."

"Let every man mind his own business."

"Would puzzle a convocation of casuists to resolve their degrees of consanguinity."

"Of good natural parts and of a liberal education."