Don Quixote Quotes

Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.

The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!.

There is no book so bad...that it does not have something good in it.

There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it.

Hunger is the best sauce in the world.

For neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand.

Until death it is all life.

Thou hast seen nothing yet.

What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?.

I do not deny that what happened to us is a thing worth laughing at. But it is not worth telling, for not everyone is sufficiently intelligent to be able to see things from the right point of view.

... he who's down one day can be up the next, unless he really wants to stay in bed, that is...

Wit and humor do not reside in slow minds.

Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed.

A bad year and a bad month to all the backbiting bitches in the world!...

It is not the responsibility of knights errant to discover whether the afflicted, the enchained and the oppressed whom they encounter on the road are reduced to these circumstances and suffer this distress for their vices, or for their virtues: the knight's sole responsibility is to succour them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds.

It's up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they're going well ... For I've heard that what they call fortune is a flighty woman who drinks too much, and, what's more, she's blind, so she can't see what she's doing, and she doesn't know who she's knocking over or who she's raising up.

Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.

The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.

A tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond.

It is one thing to write as 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.

Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.

The fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else.

... truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future.

...without intelligence, there can be no humour.

What intelligent things you say sometimes ! One would think you had studied.

They must take me for a fool, or even worse, a lunatic. And no wonder ,for I am so intensely conscious of my misfortune and my misery is so overwhelming that I am powerless to resist it and am being turned into stone, devoid of all knowledge or feeling.

She wanted, with her fickleness, to make my destruction constant; I want, by trying to destroy myself, to satisfy her desire.

What is more dangerous than to become a poet? which is, as some say, an incurable and infectious disease.

A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.

All of that is true,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘but we cannot all be friars, and God brings His children to heaven by many paths: chivalry is a religion, and there are sainted knights in Glory.’ Yes,’ responded Sancho, ‘but I’ve heard that there are more friars in heaven than knights errant.’ That is true,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘because the number of religious is greater than the number of knights.’ There are many who are errant,’ said Sancho. Many,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘but few who deserve to be called knights.

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.

The greatest madness a man can be guilty of in this life, is to let himself die outright, without being slain by any person whatever, or destroyed by any other weapon than the hands of melancholy.

Where there's music there can be no evil.

Where envy reigns virtue can't exist, and generosity doesn't go with meanness.

To dream the impossible dream, that is my quest.

Laughter distances us from that which is ugly and therefore potentially distressing, and indeed enables us to obtain paradoxical pleasure and therapeutic benefit from it.

I have never died all my life.

To think that the affairs of this life always remain in the same state is a vain presumption; indeed they all seem to be perpetually changing and moving in a circular course. Spring is followed by summer, summer by autumn, and autumn by winter, which is again followed by spring, and so time continues its everlasting round. But the life of man is ever racing to its end, swifter than time itself, without hope of renewal, unless in the next that is limitless and infinite.

He is most blessed who loves the most, the freest who is most enslaved by love,.

time has more power to undo and change things than the human will.

Not with whom you are born, but with whom you are bred.

In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind.

the praise of the wise few is more important than the mockery of the foolish many,.

Woman is made of fragile glass; but do not put her to the test to see if she will break, for that might come to pass. She is too apt to shatter, and wisdom is surely ended if what can ne'er be mended is put in the way of danger. What I say to you is true, and let us all agree : wherever Danae may be, showers of gold are there, too.

there is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain which death does not remove.

The reason of the unreasonableness which against my reason is wrought, doth so weaken my reason, as with all reason I do justly complain on your beauty.

Oh Senor" said the niece. "Your grace should send them to be burned (books), just like all the rest, because it's very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease.

For me alone Don Quixote was born and I for him. His was the power of action, mine of writing.

I've always heard the old folks say that if you don't know how to enjoy good luck when it comes, you shouldn't complain if it passes you by.

The fear thou art in, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "prevents thee from seeing or hearing correctly, for one of the effects of fear is to derange the senses and make things appear different from what they are; if thou art in such fear, withdraw to one side and leave me to myself, for alone I suffice to bring victory to that side to which I shall give my aid;" and so saying he gave Rocinante the spur, and putting the lance in rest, shot down the slope like a thunderbolt.

there are many hours and minutes between now and tomorrowand in any one of them-even in a minute,the house falls.

Where one door shuts, another opens.

So it isn’t the masses who are to blame for demanding rubbish, but rather those who aren’t capable of providing them with anything else.

...you are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch on his throne.

They reject the man who loves them and love the man who despises them.

Sancho, just as you want people to believe what you have seen in the sky, I want you to believe what I saw in the Cave of Montesinos. And that is all I have to say.

It seemed to us that all people to a greater or lesser degree belong to one of these two types, that almost every one of us resembles either Don Quixote or Hamlet.

There is a remedy for everything except death,.

...but once more I say do as you please, for we women are born to this burden of being obedient to our husbands, though they be blockheads.

Don Quixote is so crazy that he is sure no author could have invented him.