“The pen is the language of the soul; as the concepts that in it are generated, such will be its writings.”

“The pen is the tongue of the mind.”

“He who sees a play that is regular, and answerable to the rules of poetry, is pleased with the comic part, informed by the serious, surprised at the variety of accidents, improved by the language, warned by the frauds, instructed by examples, incensed against vice, and enamoured with virtue; for a good play must cause all these emotions in the soul of him that sees it, though he were never so insensible and unpolished.”

“Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.”

“It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.”

“For me alone Don Quixote was born and I for him. His was the power of action, mine of writing.”

“There are two kinds of beauty, one being of the soul and the other of the body,That of the soul is revealed through intelligence, modesty, right conduct,Generosity and good breeding, all of which qualities may exist in an ugly man;And when one's gaze is fixed upon beauty of this sort and not upon that of the body,Love is usually born suddenly and violently.”