Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.

Proverbs may not improperly be called the philosophy of the common people.

Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.

Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.

I'm not a new-agey person, but narrative is ancient and wise and generous.

We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.

Nothing wise was ever printed upon an apron.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

A proverb is one man’s wit and all men’s wisdom.

People used to grow up in small communities where folk wisdom was passed down. But we don't live there anymore. We can't go next door to your aunt and ask her for the answers.

The proverb answers where the sermon fails.

Old saws have no teeth.

I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories - I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living.

One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes?

Folktales are real.

A proverb is the wisdom of many and the wit of one.

I see film as a real opportunity to examine the human condition. No matter where the technology goes in the future, the basics don't change. Storytelling is a primitive tribal function. The elders sat around the fires and told these stories as a way to pass on the 'dos' and the 'don'ts.' That will never change.

The more you are getting older, you lose a little something. Of course there is another advantage, because of your long experience you can use it.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

Ripen your mind to the glorious history of the ages and revel in your mastery as today's youth shall look upon you as a sage.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

The ancients called happy those who learned caution from the danger of others

History some truths contains, which well may serve for lessons.