Ley 1: Si uno ha acusado y ha embrujado a otro y no puede justificarse, es pasible de muerte.
They just want to pile up and hoard money, and to get it they work almost without eating. Once a coin strays into their clutches, no matter how small, they condemn it to life imprisonment and eternal darkness. In this way, always acquiring and never spending, they’re amassing Spain’s biggest fortune. They are its strongbox, its vault, its guardians and custodians. They gather everything, hide everything, and swallow everything.
There is not the least thing can be said or done but people will talk and find fault.
Pero no he podido yo contravenir al orden de naturaleza; que en ella cada cosa engendra su semejante.
Sobre un buen cimiento se puede levantar un buen edificio, y el mejor cimiento y zanja del mundo es el dinero.
Enfrena la lengua, considera y rumia las palabras antes que te salgan de la boca, y advierte que hemos llegado a parte donde, con el favor de Dios y valor de mi brazo, hemos de salir mejorados en tercio y quinto en fama y en hacienda.
Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it; for freedom, as for honour, life may and should be ventured; and on the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can fall to the lot of man.
Happy he, to whom heaven has given a piece of bread for which he is not bound to give thanks to any but heaven itself!
Quis talia fando temperet a lacrymis?
Do not issue many edicts, and if you do, try to make them good ones, and, above all, ones that are carried out and obeyed; for edicts that are not carried out are as good as nonexistent, and they let it be known that the prince who had the intelligence and authority to issue them did not have the courage to enforce them; laws that intimidate but are not enforced become like the log that was king of the frogs: at first it frightened them, but in time they came to despise it and climbed up on it.
Despair not, valiant knight, nor regard as an untoward fate the position in which thou findest thyself; it may be that by these slips thy crooked fortune will make itself straight; for heaven by strange circuitous ways, mysterious and incomprehensible to man, raises up the fallen and makes rich the poor.
They asked Julius Caesar, the valiant Roman emperor, what was the best death. He answered, that which is unexpected, which comes suddenly and unforeseen.
I’m from the lineage of the Panzas, and they’re all stubborn, and if they say odds once, odds it’ll be, even if it’s evens, no matter what anybody says.
Oh, woe is me,” said the niece, “my uncle’s a poet, too! He knows everything, he understands everything, and I’d wager that if he wanted to be a mason, he’d know how to build a house as well as a cage.
Another thing to strive for: reading your history should move the melancholy to laughter, increase the joy of the cheerful, not irritate the simple, fill the clever with admiration for its invention, not give the serious reason to scorn it, and allow the prudent to praise it.
There is nothing that vexes the heart of the poor more than hunger and high prices.
Oh my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, perfection of all beauty, summit and crown of discretion, treasure house of grace, depositary of virtue, and finally, ideal of all that is good, honourable, and delectable in this world! What is thy grace doing now?
Lovers’ promises which are for the most part quickly made and very slowly performed.
There are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man.
Today they make a law and tomorrow they break it, and maybe it’s better that way. After all, no sooner does somebody promise to change his habits than he immediately falls into worse ones. It’s one thing to extol discipline and another to exercise it, and there’s a vast chasm between the saying and the doing.