In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk til dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains had dried up, causing him to lose his mind. His fantasy filled with everything he had read in his books, enchantments as well as combats, battles, challenges, and he became so convinced in his imagination of the truth of all the countless grandiloquent and false inventions he read that for him no history in the world was truer.
The truth is that when his mind was completely gone, he had the strangest thought any lunatic in the world ever had, which was that it seemed reasonable and necessary to him, both for the sake of his honour and as a service to the nation, to become a knight errant and travel the world with his armour and his horse to seek adventures and engage in everything he had read that knights engaged in, righting all manner of wrongs and, by seizing the opportunity and placing himself in danger and ending those wrongs, winning eternal renown and everlasting fame.
From Chapter XXXIII : Which recounts the novel of The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious.
Lotario to Anselmo: ‘… the desire that plagues me is my wondering of Camila, my wife, is as good and perfect as I think she is, and I cannot learn the truth except by testing her so that the test reveal the worth of her virtue, as fire shows the worth of gold. Because it seems to me, dear friend, that a woman is not virtuous if she is not solicited, and that she alone is strong who does not bend to promises, gifts, tears, and the constant importunities of lovers who woo her. Why be grateful when a woman is good’ he said, ‘if no one urges her to be bad? … In short, I do not hold the woman who is virtuous because of fear or lack of opportunity in the same esteem as the one who is courted and pursued and emerges wearing the victor’s crown. For these reasons, and many others I could mention that support and strengthen this opinion, my desire is for Camila, my wife, to pass through these difficulties, and be refined and prove her value in the fire of being wooed and courted by one worthy of desiring her; and if she emerges, as I believe she will, triumphant from this battle, I shall deem my good fortune unparalleled …’
Anselmo to Lotario: ‘ And if you believe she will emerge victorious from all my assaults, as she undoubtedly will, what designations do you plan to give her afterward that are better than the ones she has now? What will she be afterward that is better than what she is now? Either your opinion of her is not what you say it is, or you do not know what you are asking. … if she is virtuous as you believe, it would be reckless to experiment with that truth, for when you have done so, it will still have the same value it had before. Therefore we must conclude that attempting actions more likely to harm us than to benefit us is characteristic of rash minds bereft of reason, especially when they are forced or compelled to undertake them, and when even from a distance it is obvious that the venture is an act of patent madness.’
‘Tell me, Anselmo; if heaven, or good luck, had made you the possessor and legitimate owner of a fine diamond whose worth and value satisfied every jeweller who ever saw it, and all of them were of the opinion and said in one voice that in value, size and purity it was all that such a stone could be, and you believed this as well, having no knowledge to the contrary, would it be reasonable for you to take that diamond, and by dint of powerful blows test if it was as hard and as fine as they said? Moreover, in the event you did this, and the stone withstood so foolish a test, it would not, for that reason gain in value or fame, but if it shattered, which is possible, wouldn’t everything be lost? Yes, certainly, and its owner would be thought a fool by everyone.’
Don Quixote: ‘… nothing I eat will taste good until I learn everything.’
Don Quixote: ‘Well, the same thing happens in the drama and business of this world, where some play emperors, others pontiffs, in short, all the figures that can be presented in a play, but at the end, which is when life is over, death removes the clothing that differentiated them, and all are equal in the grave.’
The Knight of the Wood to Don Quixote: ‘Who is it? Who are you? Do you count yourself among the contented or the afflicted?’
‘The afflicted,’ responded Don Quixote.
‘Then approach,’ responded the Knight of the Wood, ‘and you shall realise that you are approaching sorrow and affliction personified.’
Pane lucrando – the phrase means ‘in order to earn one’s bread’
To which the duchess responded:
‘That our good friend Sancho is comical is something I esteem greatly, because it is a sign of his cleverness; for wit and humour, Senor Don Quixote, as your grace well knows, do not reside in slow minds …’
Don Quixote giving advice to Sancho Panza before he embarks on his governorship of the insula:
‘Eat sparingly at midday and even less for supper, for the health of the entire body is forged in the workshop of the stomach.’
Sancho Panza to his donkey:
‘Come here, my companion and friend, comrade in all my sufferings and woes: when I spent time with you and had no other thoughts but mending your harness and feeding your body, then my hours, my days, and my years were happy, but after I left you and climbed the towers of ambition and pride, a thousand miseries, a thousand troubles and four thousand worries have entered my deep soul.’
Sancho Panza to Don Quixote:
‘I’ve heard that the woman they call Fortune is drunken, fickle, and most of all blind, so she doesn’t see what she’s doing and doesn’t know who she’s throwing down or raising up.’
Sancho Panza on giving up the governorship:
‘My lord and lady, because it was the wish of your highnesses, and not because of any merit in me, I went to govern the insula of Barataria, which I entered naked, and I’m naked now; I haven’t lost of gained a thing. As to whether I governed well or badly, I’ve witnessed before me, and they’ll say whatever they want. I decided to questions and settled cases, always dying of hunger, for such was the desire of Dr.Pedro Recio, a native of Tirteafuera and a governoresque and insulano doctor. Enemies attacked us by night, placing in us great difficulties, and the people of the insula say we emerged free and victorious because of the valor of my arm, and if they’re telling the truth, may God keep them safe. In short, in this time I’ve weighed the burdens and obligations that come with governing, and I’ve found, by my own reckoning, that my shoulders couldn’t carry them; they’re not the right load for my ribs, and not the right arrows for my quiver, and so, before the governorship could do away with me, I decided to do away with the governorship, and yesterday morning I left the insula just as I found it …’
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