The dialogue of the dogs Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Book: The Dialogue of the Dogs
Quotes of Book: The Dialogue of the Dogs

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
whose generous hands never hold back. I disagree with the saying "The hard-hearted give more than the poor," -as if a hard-hearted, greedy man would ever give anything-but a generous but penniless man at least gives good wishes when they're all he's got.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
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.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
How did you usually find a master? Because the way things are, it's certainly tough nowadays to find a good one. The lords of the earth are very different from the Lord of heaven.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
That way, when the wolf came, I'd stand a better chance of catching him. Week in and week out they'd raised the alarm, and one sable-black night I lay in ambush for those wolves against whom I'd failed to protect the flock. While the other dogs tore out ahead of me, I lay doggo behind a bush and watched two shepherds mark out one of the best lambs in the fold and kill it-and in such a way that in the morning, everyone would think the wolf had done it.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
So suddenly? It must've been for love. That love is strong medicine, and often carries a strong chaser of regret.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
What's this then?" the friend asked, crossing himself as if he had seen a ghost. "Are you really Ensign Campuzano? Am I really seeing you around here? I thought you were in Flanders making free with your pikestaff, not hobbling along here with your cutlass for a walking stick. How pale and scrawny you look!
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
There I was, fat and happy with my second master and my new responsibilities. I watched the fold carefully and diligently except at siesta time, which I used to spend in the shade of some tree or bank, or a ravine or an orchard, next to one of the creeks that ran all through there. I didn't pass these hours of tranquility idly, either. I occupied my memory by remembering many things, especially the life my old master and everyone like him led in the slaughterhouse, always jumping at the peevish pleasures of their mistresses.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
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.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
In Roman times everybody spoke Latin as their mother tongue, yet there must've been some morons even then. Speaking Latin didn't absolve them of stupidity.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
When I found my comprehension somewhat improved by this habit, I determined, as if I already knew how to talk even then, to take advantage of this exercise whenever I could-but not as some ignoramuses do. There are those who interlard their conversations from time to time with some brief, pithy Latin phrase, giving strangers to understand that they're great Latinists when they hardly know how to decline a noun or conjugate a verb.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
As I said, I went back to my dog's rations, and to the bones that a household serving slave threw me, and even those I had to fight over with two spotted cats. Free and easy, they thought nothing of snatching whatever fell outside the radius of my chain.
book-quote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra _ The Dialogue of the Dogs
So I pretended humility whenever I wanted to enter the service of a household, having first cased the place to ascertain that it could maintain and accommodate a large dog. Then I parked myself by the door and, when an apparent stranger came up, I barked at him. The lord of the house would come out and I'd lower my head, wag my tail, go up to him, and lick his brogans with my tongue."
book-quote