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Wouldn’t it be better to stay peacefully in your house and not wander around the world searching for bread made from something better than wheat, never stopping to think that many people go looking for wool and come back shorn?”
At this point Sancho awoke and, feeling that bulk almost on top of him, thought it was a nightmare, and he began to throw punches in all directions, and I don’t know how many of them struck Maritornes, but she, feeling the pain and tossing all modesty aside, hit back at Sancho so many times that he lost all desire to sleep; seeing himself treated in this way, and not knowing by whom, he struggled to his feet, threw his arms around Maritornes, and the two of them began the fiercest and most laughable scuffle the world has ever seen.
Scuffle
Saying this, he rode into the midst of the host of sheep and began to run at them with his lance as fearlessly and courageously as if he really were attacking his mortal enemies. The shepherds and herdsmen guarding the flock came running, shouting for him to stop, but seeing that this had no effect, they unhooked their slings and began to greet his ears with stones as big as fists.
Sheep fighting
Sancho came so close that his eyes were almost in his master’s mouth; by this time the balm had taken effect in Don Quixote’s stomach, and just as Sancho looked into his mouth, he threw up, more vigorously than if he were firing a musket, everything he had inside, and all of it hit the compassionate squire in the face.
Vomit
“Mother of God!” said Sancho. “What’s happened? Surely this poor sinner is mortally wounded, for he’s vomiting blood from his mouth.” But looking a little more closely, he realized by the color, taste, and smell that it was not blood but the balm from the cruet, which he had seen him drink, and he was so disgusted by this that his stomach turned over and he vomited his innards all over his master, and the two of them were left as splendid as pearls.
Vomit 2
At this the bachelor rode off, and Don Quixote asked Sancho what had moved him to call him The Knight of the Sorrowful Face at that moment and at no other. “I’ll tell you,” responded Sancho. “I was looking at you for a while in the light of the torch that unlucky man was carrying, and the truth is that your grace has the sorriest-looking face I’ve seen recently, and it must be on account of your weariness after this battle, or the molars and teeth you’ve lost.”
Sorrowful Face
“If you tell your story this way, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “repeating everything you say two times, you will not finish in two days; tell it in a continuous way, and speak like a man of understanding, or do not say anything at all.”
this goatherd was in love with Torralba, the shepherdess, who was a stout girl, and wild, and a little mannish because she had something of a mustache; it’s as if I could see her now.”
“That is the nature of women,” said Don Quixote. “They reject the man who loves them and love the man who despises them.
love in young men is, for the most part, nothing but appetite, which, having pleasure as its ultimate goal, ends when that goal is achieved,
The great achievement is to lose one’s reason for no reason, and to let my lady know that if I can do this without cause, what should I not do if there were cause?
hastily he pulled off his breeches and was left wearing only his skin and shirttails, and then, without further ado, he kicked his heels twice, turned two cartwheels with his head down and his feet in the air, and revealed certain things; Sancho, in order not to see them again, pulled on Rocinante’s reins and turned him around,
One must treat the virtuous woman as one treats relics: adore them but not touch them.
“Oh, base, lowborn, wretched, rude, ignorant, foul-mouthed, ill-spoken, slanderous, insolent varlet! You have dared to speak such words in my presence and in the presence of these distinguished ladies, dared to fill your befuddled imagination with such vileness and effrontery? Leave my presence, unholy monster, repository of lies, stronghold of falsehoods, storehouse of deceits, inventor of iniquities, promulgator of insolence, enemy of the decorum owed to these royal persons. Go, do not appear before me under pain of my wrath!”
“but it is one thing to write as a poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.”
History vs. Poetry
stultorum infinitus est numerus,
The number of fools is infinite
know that the path of virtue is very narrow, and the road of wickedness is broad and spacious; I know that their endings and conclusions are different, because the expansive, spacious road of wickedness ends in death, and the road of virtue, so narrow and difficult, ends in life, not the life that ends, but life everlasting;
Path of virtue
“I mean, there’s nothing of the scoundrel in him; mine’s as innocent as a baby; he doesn’t know how to harm anybody, he can only do good to everybody, and there’s no malice in him: a child could convince him it’s night in the middle of the day, and because he’s simple I love him with all my heart and couldn’t leave him no matter how many crazy things he does.”
Sancho's loved for Don Quixote
people who look for adventures don’t always find good ones.”
“Forewarned is forearmed: nothing is lost by cautioning me, although I know from experience that I have visible and invisible enemies, and I do not know when, or where, or how, or in what guise they will attack me.”
Haters
And turning to Sancho, he asked for his sallet helmet; Sancho did not have time to take out the curds and was obliged to hand him the helmet just as it was. Don Quixote took it, and without even glancing at what might be inside, he quickly placed it on his head; since the curds were pressed and squeezed together, the whey began to run down Don Quixote’s face and beard, which startled him so much that he said to Sancho: “What can this be, Sancho? It seems as if my head is softening, or my brains are melting, or that I am bathed in perspiration from head to foot. And if I am perspiring, the
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Steve Martin
I say that he must know how to swim as well as they say the fishman Nicolás, or Nicolao,2 could swim; he must know how to shoe a horse and repair a saddle and bridle; and returning to what was said before, he must keep his faith in God and in his lady; he must be chaste in his thoughts, honest in his words, liberal in his actions, valiant in his deeds, long-suffering in his afflictions, charitable with those in need, and, finally, an upholder of the truth, even if it costs him his life to defend
A man
he is a combination madman who has many lucid intervals.”
Don Quixote description
What I ask is the impossible, for there is no force on earth that has the power to turn back time that has passed us by, to bring back what once was ours. Time races, it flies, it charges past, and will never return, and only a fool would beg a halt, or if the time would pass, or if at last the time would come.
Time poetry
O Flattery, how powerful you are, how far you extend, how widespread the boundaries of your pleasant domain!
Power of flatery
“Do the enchanted eat?” said the cousin. “They do not eat,” responded Don Quixote, “nor do they have excretory wastes, although some believe that their nails, beards, and hair all grow.”
The enchanted don't poop
for it is also clear that this monkey is not an astrologer, and neither he nor his master casts, or knows how to cast, the astrological charts used so widely now in Spain that there’s not a fishwife, page, or old cobbler who does not presume to cast a chart as if it were the knave in a pack of cards lying on the floor, corrupting the marvelous truths of science with their lies and ignorance.
Astrology
“If I could take out my heart and place it before the eyes of your highness, here on this table, on a plate, it would spare my tongue the effort of saying what can barely be thought, because in it Your Excellency would see her portrayed in detail; but why should I begin now to depict and describe, point by point and part by part, the beauty of the peerless Dulcinea?
Love for Dulcinea
In short, I would not trade him for any other squire even if I were given a city to do so;
Don Quixote's love for Sancho
“Why must I be so unfortunate a knight that no maiden can look upon me without falling in love…!
Why do they all love me?
“Away, evil enchanters! Away, base wizards! For I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, against whom your wicked intentions are powerless and of little use!”
Cats
for edicts that are not carried out are as good as nonexistent, and they let it be known that the prince who had the intelligence and authority to issue them did not have the courage to enforce them; laws that intimidate but are not enforced become like the log that was king of the frogs: at first it frightened them, but in time they came to despise it and climbed up on it.
Unenforceable Laws
Do not show yourself to be, even if you are—which I do not believe—a greedy man, a womanizer, or a glutton, because if the people and those who deal with you learn your specific inclination, that is where they will attack until they throw you down to the depths of perdition.
Advice for a politician
Time passes fast
it is not a good idea to nurture a snake in your bosom or shelter enemies in your house.
Common sense
