Don Quixote Quotes

“When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“I come in a world of iron...to make a world of gold”
― Dale Wasserman, Man of La Mancha: A Musical Play

“One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this. -Don Quixote.”
― Joe Darion, Man of La Mancha

“There is remedy for all things except death - Don Quixote De La Mancha”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Don Quixote - the famous literary madman - fought windmills. People think he saw giants when he looked at them, but those of us who've been there know the truth. He saw windmills, just like everyone else - but he believed they were giants. The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you're suddenly going to believe.”
― Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep

“I want you to see me naked and performing one or two dozen mad acts, which will take me less than half an hour, because if you have seen them with your own eyes, you can safely swear to any others you might wish to add.”
― Cervantès, Don Quichotte

“it is better to have red a great work of another culture in translation than never to have read it at all.”
― Henry Gratton Doyle

“While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw—that of outright unreadability.”
― Martin Amis, The War against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000

“I don't see what my arse has to do with enchantings!”
― Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel

“Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.”
― Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote

“As long as he fought imaginary giants, Don Quixote was just play-acting. However once he actually kills someone, he will cling to his fantasies for all he is worth, because only they give meaning to his tragic misdeed. Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to those sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“the best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive [for one and all] to learn Spanish.”
― Aubrey F.G. Bell

“As you know, I have wealth of my own and do not desire anyone else's; I am free and do not care to submit to another; I do not love or despise anyone. I do not deceive this one or solicit that one; I do not mock one or amuse myself with another. The honest conversation of the shepherdesses from these hamlets, and tending to my goats, are my entertainment. The limits of my desires are these mountains, and if they go beyond here, it is to contemplate the beauty of heaven and the steps whereby the soul travels to its first home.”
― Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

“El grande Homero no escribió en latín, porque era griego, ni Virgilio no escribió en griego, porque era latino. En resolución, todos los poetas antiguos escribieron en la lengua que mamaron en la leche, y no fueron a buscar las extranjeras para declarar la alteza de sus conceptos; y siendo esto así, razón sería se extendiese esta costumbre por todas las naciones, y que no se desestimase el poeta alemán porque escribe en su lengua, ni el castellano, ni aun el vizcaíno, que escribe en la suya.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“A blessing on those happy ages that did not know the dreadful fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor is, I feel sure, being rewarded in hell for his diabolical creation, by which he made it possible for an infamous and cowardly hand to take away the life of a brave knight as, in the heat of the courage and resolution that fires and animates the gallant breast, a stray bullet appears, nobody knows how or from where - fired perhaps by some fellow who took fright at the flash of the fiendish contraption, and fled - and in an instant put an end to the life and loves of one who deserved to live for many a long age.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“After I came down from the sky, and after I looked at the earth from that great height and saw how small it was, the burning desire I had to be a governor cooled a little; where’s the greatness in ruling a mustard seed, or the dignity or pride in governing half a dozen men the size of hazel nuts?”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“-Teresa dice -dijo Sancho- que ate bien mi dedo con vuestra merced, y que hablen cartas y callen barbas, porque quien destaja no baraja, pues más vale un toma que dos te daré. Y yo digo que el consejo de la mujer es poco, y el que no lo toma es loco.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“And so, let it be said that this aforementioned gentleman spent his times of leisure --which meant most of the year-- reading books of chivalry with so much devotion and enthusiasm that he forgot almost completely about the hunt and even about the administration of his estate; and in his rash curiosity and folly he went so far as to sell acres of arable land in order to buy books of chivalry to read, and he brought as many of them as he could into his house...”
― Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote

“How can you say that?" retorted Don Quixote. "Do you not hear the neighing of the horses, the blaring of the trumpets, and the rattling of the drums?"
"All I can hear," replied Sancho, "is lots of sheep bleating.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Come, Death, so subtly veiled that I
Thy coming know not, how or when,
Lest it should give me life again
To find how sweet it is to die.”
― Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

“It is a wise man’s duty to save himself for to-morrow, and not risk everything on one day.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Me parece que el traducir de una lengua en otra, como no sea de las reinas de las lenguas, griega y latina, es como quien mira los tapices flamencos por el revés; que aunque se ven las figuras, son llenas de hilos que las escurecen, y no se ven con la lisura y tez de la haz.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“After I came down from the sky, and after I looked at the earth from that great height and saw how small it was, the burning desire I had to be a governor cooled a little; where’s the greatness in ruling a mustard seed, or the dignity or pride in governing half a dozen men the size of hazel nuts? It seemed to me that this was all there was on the whole earth.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“I implore thee to tell me, if it doth not cause thee too much pain, what it is that distresseth thee, and who, what, and how many are the persons on whom I must wreak proper, complete, and entire vengeance.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“All of Spain is contained in DON QUIXOTE—-a decrepit society unaware the world has passed it by.”
― Adolf Hitler

“And you know each other, you say?'
'As sure as eggs is eggs,' the goliard confirmed cheerfully. 'After all, I know his name, and he mine. He knows I'm called Tybald Raabe. Go on, m'lord Reinmar, what's my name?'
'Tybald Raabe'
'See?”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Narrenturm

“El traductor no es un traidor. Es más bien un traedor de tesoros de otras tierras.”
― John D. Rutherford, hispanista británico y traductor al inglés de Don Quijote

“While it would be too reductive (but not wrong) to say Cervantes equates knight-errantry with religious belief, he does seem to insinuate a syllogism that goes: Chivalric novels are false; the Bible resembles those novels; therefore, the Bible is false. But Cervantes gleefully complicates matters by insisting repeatedly that Don Quixote is true, which he and everyone who reads it knows is untrue.”
― Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800

“You like to read?" Reading was one of David's favorite things to do. So much more enjoyable than talking or exchanging pleasantries with strangers.
"Yes, do you?" she asked, a hopeful look on her face.
"Indeed, I do....I regretted that I could only fit one book in my rucksack on the Continent."
.."Oh, do tell me, what was it?"
"In English you would call it The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of Lamancha, but I had the Spanish version."
"..Don Quixote. A comedy is it not?'
..."Marianne gave it to me. She said I would need something silly to cheer me on the battlefield. But I read it so many times, I must say my opinion of the book changed, more than once."
"How so?", she asked...
"At first I thought it was a comedy, then I came to regard it as a tragic novel, because Quixote was considered mad and treated like a lunatic. But in the end I found it life-changing."
.."How so?"
"The book save my life, in more ways than one. Reading it kept me sane all those long, sleepless nights in the cold...."
"How else did it save your life?" Lady Annabelle asked...
.."It quite literally saved me from death. When the French captured me and a small group of my men, they began executing the officers. Only when they got to me, they rifled through my rucksack and when they saw the book, they realized I could speak Spanish. That was of use to them so they kept me alive as an interpreter.”
― Valerie Bowman, Earl Lessons

“Without making any boast of it Sancho Panza succeeded in the course of years, by feeding him a great number of romances of chivalry and adventure in the evening and night hours, in so diverting from himself his demon, whom he later called Don Quixote, that this demon thereupon set out, uninhibited, on the maddest exploits, which, however, for the lack of a preordained object, which should have been Sancho Panza himself, harmed nobody. A free man, Sancho Panza philosophically followed Don Quixote on his crusades, perhaps out of a sense of responsibility and had of them a great and edifying entertainment to the end of his days.”
― Franz Kafka