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Beauty has this power, that in an instant, a moment, it brings with it the desire of whoever sees and knows it, and when it reveals or promises some way of reaching and enjoying it, with powerful fervor it sets fire to the soul of whoever contemplates it, just like the means whereby dry prepared gunpowder is easily lit by any spark that touches it.

— Miguel de Cervantes

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Source: "The Two Maidens", in Exemplary Novels (1613), trans. Edith Grossman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), p. 308
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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

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Can we ever have too much of a good thing?

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It is a common proverb, beauteous princess, that diligence is the mother of good fortune.

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There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.

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"There is no book so bad," said the bachelor, "but something good may be found in it."

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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.

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Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

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A good repentance is the best medicine for diseases of the soul.

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Topics

Beauty

More quotes by Miguel de Cervantes

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

El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha) (1605)

Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things underground, and much more in the skies.

El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha) (1605)

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

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

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By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece.

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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Miguel de Cervantes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.