To be prepared is half the victory.

Tell me what company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are.

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

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

And the first thing I would do in my government, 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;...

But my thoughts ran woolgathering; and I did like the countryman, who looked for his ass while he was mounted on his back.

Fair and softly goes far.

Every one is the son of his own works.

A woman’s advice has little value, but he who won’t take it is a fool

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.

Didn’t I tell you, Don Quixote, sir, to turn back, for they were not armies you were going to attack, but flocks of sheep?

Mind your own business

Fear is sharp-sighted and can see things under ground and much more in the skies.

Jests that give pains are no jests

There are but few proverbial sayings that are not true, for they are all drawn from experience itself, which is the mother of all sciences

Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills.

Thou hast seen nothing yet.

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.

He got the better of himself, and that’s the best kind of victory one can wish for

Be slow of tongue and quick of eye

Blessings on him who invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thoughts.

There is a strange charm in the hope of a good legacy that wonderfully reduces the sorrow people otherwise may feel for the death of their relatives and friends

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

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.

Who doesn’t know how to enjoy luck when it comes, should not complain when it passes him by

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds

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

Faint heart ne’er won fair lady

He preaches well that lives well, quoth Sancho; that’s all the divinity I understand

There’s a remedy for everything except death

Without a governorship you came out of your mother’s womb, without a governorship you’ve lived to this day, and without a governorship you’ll go – or they’ll take you – to the grave.

By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.

I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.

It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.

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

`If I had a water thirst,’ replied Sancho, `there are wells on the road where I could have quenched it.’

I had rather munch a crust of brown bread and an onion in a corner, without any more ado or ceremony, than feed upon turkey at another man ‘ s table, where one is fain...

Absence, that common cure of love.

Under a bad cloak there is often a good drinker

Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.

Honesty’s the best policy

You must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff.

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

Love in young men for the most part is not love but sexual desire, and its accomplishment is the end

Every one is as God made him, and often a great deal worse.

I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea.

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

God bless the inventor of sleep, the cloak that covers all men’s thoughts, the food that cures all hunger . . . the balancing weight that levels the shepherd with the king and the simple...

An honest man’s word is as good as his bond.