Don Quixote of La Mancha

Don Quixote of La Mancha
Miguel de Cervantes
New York: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.
Part One, 1605; Part Two: 1615. (1964)

If you read Don Quixote for no other reason, read it for the abundance of proverbs uttered by Sancho Panza and by many others. [What I cannot get out of my mind is the visualization of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and Bud Abbott, the skinny one, and Lou Costello, the heavyset one.]

Alonso Quinjano is a gaunt country gentleman whose mind is so crazed by reading romances of chivalry that he believes himself called upon to redress the wrongs of the whole world and sets out on his horse with his page, Sancho Panza, to do so. He is knighted by an inn keeper whose miserable hostel he mistakes for a castle. His loss of reality causes him to tilt at windmills and to see flocks of sheep as armies. However, from a satiric treatment of the effects of romantic novels of chivalry in Part One, Cervantes makes Don Quixote in Part Two a serious protagonist who may act in an eccentric manner, but who speaks wisely and well.

Some critics think the contrasting figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the visionary idealist and the practical realist, symbolize the two parts of the Spanish character. Cervantes' wealth of minor characters, shepherds, inn keepers, students, priests, and nobles, gives the novel a panoramic view of 17th-century Spanish society. [Review based on Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. Fourth Edition. Ed. Bruce Murphy. New York: HarperCollins Publisher, Inc. 1948-1996. ]

Some interesting quotes in Part One:
"...when he read of those courtships and letters of challenge that knights sent to ladies, often containing expressions such as: 'The reason for your unreasonable treatment of my reason so enfeebles my reason that I have reason to complain of your beauty'...bewildered the poor gentleman's understanding for he racked his brain day and night to unbowel their meaning." p. 57.

"At the mention of [Sancho Panza's] ass Don Quixote hesitated a little, racking his brain to remember any case of a knight-errant who was attended by a squire mounted on ass-back...." p. 96.

"In all the books I have delved into I have never found that knights-errant ate, unless by mere chance or at some costly banquets prepared in their honor." p. 115.

Don Quixote: "I say that it is impossible that there could be any knight-errant without a lady, because it is proper and natural for them to be in love as for the sky to have stars." p. 133.

Don Quixote: "I am sure, Sancho, that there is no proverb that is not true, for all proverbs are maxims drawn from experience, the mother of all knowledge...." p. 198. [And, indeed, the novel is full of pithy proverbs.]

" 'Master,' replied Sancho, 'is it a good rule of chivalry that we should go wandering up and down through these mountains after a madman, who perhaps, when he is found, will take it into his head to finish what he began--not his story, but the breaking of your head and my ribs?' " p. 240.

Don Quixote: "They [classical authors] do not portray them [heroes] or describe them as they were but as they should have been, to give example by their virtues to the men to come after them." p. 241.

Don Quixote: "A knight-errant who goes mad for a good reason deserves no thanks or gratitude; the whole point consists in going crazy without cause, and thereby warn my lady what to expect from me in the wet if this is what I do in the dry." p. 242.

Curate: "If when you converse with this worthy gentleman [Don Quixote] you discuss other topics that have no bearing upon his madness [his obsessions with chivalry], he speaks very reasonably and shows that he possesses a clear head and a calm understanding...[and] provided one does not broach this subject of his chivalries, he could be considered a man of very sound judgment." p. 309.

Sancho: "That's the sort of love I've heard them preach about, and they add that we ought to love our Lord for Himself alone, without being driven to it by hope of glory or the fear of punishment; but speaking for myself, I'm all for serving Him for what he can do for me." p. 315.

Some proverbs: "Remember that by seeking the impossible you may justly be denied the possible...." p. 341. "...he who gives quickly gives twice over." p. 349. "...what costs little is little prized." p. 349.

The curate: "...because the public after seeing a well-written and well-constructed play, would come away delighted by the comic part, instructed by the serious, intrigued by the plot, enlivened by the witty quips, warned by the tricks, edified by the moral, incensed against vice, and enamored of virtue." p. 483.

Sancho on being king: "...I'd do as I liked; and doing as I liked, I'd do my pleasure; and doing my pleasure, I'd be content; and being content, there's nothing more to wish for, and when there's nothing more to wish for, it's all over." p. 490.

Part Two
Sancho Panza to Don Quixote: "Then the first thing I'll say is that the common people take your worship for a mighty great madman, and they think I'm no less of a simpleton." p.542.

Sancho: "The most cunning part in a comedy is the clown's, for a man who wants to be taken for a simpleton must never be one." p. 550.

Quixote: "...when I approached to lift Dulcinea upon her hackney (as you say it was, though I thought it was a she-ass), she gave me such a whiff of raw garlic that my very soul reeked of the pestiferous odor." p. 595.

"For what Don Quixote said was consistent, elegant, and well expressed, but what he did was eccentric, rash and absurd." p. 645.

Don Lorenzo: "[Don Quixote] is a gallant madman...." p. 652.

Sancho: "He preaches well who lives well, and I know no other theologies than that."

"For as it has often been remarked in the course of this great history, the knight only went astray when he touched upon chivalry, but in every other topic he showed that he possessed a clear-sighted and unbiased mind, with the result that his actions belied his judgment, and his judgment his actions...." p. 827.

Sancho: "...for I know more proverbs that would fill a book, and when I talk, they crowd so thick and fast into my mouth that they struggle to get out first." p. 829.

" 'One word only I beseech you to hear, valiant Don Quixote,' said Altisdora, 'and it is this: I beg your pardon for saying you had stolen my garters, for by God and my soul I have them on, and I have fallen into the same blunder as the man who went searching for the ass he was riding on." p. 934.

Don Quixote's epitaph: "He reck'd the world of little prize/ ...but had the fortune in his age,/ To live a fool and die a sage." p. 1049.