Mateo Alemán
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Mateo Alemán (September 1547 – 1614) was a Spanish novelist and writer.
Quotes[edit]
Guzmán de Alfarache (1599-1604)[edit]
- Quotes reported in Thomas Benfield Harbottle and Martin Hume, Dictionary of quotations (Spanish) (New York: Swan Sonnenschein, 1907)
- Even as there is no virtue which is wanting to the busy man, so there is no vice which does not bear the idle company.
- Pt. I, Lib. II, Ch. VI.
- Where wedges are worthless, the finger nails may serve.
- Pt. I, Lib. III, Ch. VIII.
- Those who are not bettered by kind treatment, or moved by soft words, must be brought under by the application of stern and rigorous punishment.
- Pt. I, Lib. III, Ch. IX.
- On a day when you can dine on dry bread in your own house, do not seek to eat tender peacocks in the house of another.
- Pt. I, Lib. III, Ch. X.
- Even the ass wearies of work.
- Pt. II, Lib. I, Ch. III.
- He soon retires (i.e., into a cloister) who finds religion late.
- Pt. II, Lib. I, Ch. III.
- An unsatisfactory agreement is less harmful than a successful lawsuit.
- Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. II.
- Idleness is the open field of perdition, well tilled and sown with evil thoughts.
- Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. VI.
- A little pebble will a waggon overturn.
- Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. VIII.
- How oft he finds himself the last, who was the first to saddle.
- Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. IX.
- It is the treason that finds favour, and not the traitor who is guilty of it.
- Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. X.
- He who buys what he needs not, sells what he needs.
- Pt. II, Lib. III, Ch. III.
- The wise man's rule is worth much more to him than the fool's revenue.
- Pt. II, Lib. III, Ch. III.
- The doctor begins where the apothecary ends, and the clergyman where the doctor ends.
- Pt. II, Lib. III, Ch. V.
- Better a thrifty son-in-law and poor, than a glutton who is rich.
- Pt. II, Lib. III, Ch. X.
