Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Determine with intelligence the worth of your position, and if it allows you to give your servants livery, let it be modest and useful rather than showy and splendid, and divide it between your servants and the poor: I mean that if you are going to dress six pages, dress three of them and three poor men, and in this way you will have pages both in heaven and on the ground; this unusual manner of giving livery cannot be understood by the vainglorious. Do not eat garlic or onions lest their smell reveal your peasant origins. Walk slowly; speak calmly, but not in a way that makes it seem you are listening to yourself, for all affectation is wrong. Eat sparingly at midday and even less for supper, for the health of the entire body is forged in the workshop of the stomach. Be temperate in your drinking, remembering that too much wine cannot keep either a secret or a promise. Be careful, Sancho, not to chew with your mouth full or to eructate in front of anyone.”