To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.
— Miguel de Cervantes
Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.
A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.
Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.
A closed mouth catches no flies.
There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.
He preaches well that lives well.
It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.
Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.
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.
No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.
Fair and softly goes far.
Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
He had a face like a blessing.
There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.
Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched.
The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.
One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.
Tis the only comfort of the miserable to have partners in their woes.
Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.
Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.
Tis a dainty thing to command, though twere but a flock of sheep.
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.
The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.
'Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.
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.
Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.
Jests that give pains are no jests.
Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.
A person dishonored is worst than dead.
There's no taking trout with dry breeches.
No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden better than her own reserve.
Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea.
Man appoints, and God disappoints.
Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.
Virtue is the truest nobility.
God bears with the wicked, but not forever.
It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.
Every man is the son of his own works.
True valor lies between cowardice and rashness.
Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.
Thou hast seen nothing yet.
When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.
The eyes those silent tongues of love.
Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.
He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.
