Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“That Sancho is not you,” said Don Quixote, “because not only are you not golden silence, you are foolish speech and stubborn persistence, but even so I should like to know which four proverbs came to mind just now that were so to the point, because I have been searching my mind, and I have a good one, and I cannot think of a single proverb.” “Which ones could be better,” said Sancho, “than ‘Never put your thumbs between two wisdom teeth’ and ‘There’s no answer to get out of my house and what do you want with my wife’ and ‘Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it’s bad luck for the pitcher’? They’re all just fine. Because nobody should take on his governor or the person in authority because he’ll come out of it hurt, like the man who puts his finger between two wisdom teeth, and if they’re not wisdom teeth but just plain molars, it doesn’t matter; and there’s no reply to what the governor says, like the ‘Leave my house and what do you want with my wife.’ As for the stone and the pitcher, even a blind man can see that. So whoever sees the mote in somebody else’s eye has to see the beam in his own, so that nobody can say about him: ‘The dead woman was frightened by the one with her throat cut.’ And your grace knows very well that the fool knows more in his own house than the wise man does in somebody else’s.”