Don Quixote

Don Quixote

by

Miguel de Cervantes

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Don Quixote de la Mancha Character Analysis

A poor hidalgo of nearly fifty named Alonso Quixano, he is a lonely, bookish man with nearly no family and no discernible past, who turns himself through the power of fantasy (or insanity) into a noble knight errant, sometimes also known as the Knight of the Sorry Face or the Knight of the Lions. Quixote is the product of his ideals straining against reality, a righter of wrongs and a comical fumbler. For the first half-century of his life Quixote stays home and reads fiction, from which he derives all his knowledge of the world. When he leaves home, he must face the irreparable differences between the world of chivalry books and the overwhelming, sensuous, contradictory reality of 17th century Spain. Not only that - he must face the disdain and mockery of everyone who wants to disabuse him of his ideals. The difficulties of the world, and the psychological and physical humiliations that Quixote must endure at the hand of his friends, finally extinguish his fantasies.

Don Quixote de la Mancha Quotes in Don Quixote

The Don Quixote quotes below are all either spoken by Don Quixote de la Mancha or refer to Don Quixote de la Mancha. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Truth and Lies Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

In short, our hidalgo was soon so absorbed in these books that his nights were spent reading from dusk till dawn, and his days from dawn till dusk, until the lack of sleep the excess of reading withered his brain, and he went mad. … The idea that this whole fabric of famous fabrications was real so established itself in his mind that no history in the world was truer for him.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 2 Quotes

And since whatever our adventurer thought, saw, or imagined seemed to him to be as it was in the books he’d read, as soon as he saw the inn he took it for a castle with its four towers and their spires of shining silver.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha
Related Symbols: Inns
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 4 Quotes

There is no reason why someone with a plebeian name should not be a knight, for every man is the child of his own deeds.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 8 Quotes

But Don Quixote was so convinced that they were giants that he neither heard his squire Sancho’s shouts nor saw what stood in front of him.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha, Sancho Panza
Page Number: 64
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 25 Quotes

Let me add that when a painter wants to become famous for his art, he tries to copy originals by the finest artists he knows. And this same rule holds good for nearly all the trades and professions of importance that serve to adorn a society.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 28 Quotes

An ass you are, an ass you will remain and an ass you will still be when you end your days on this earth, and it is my belief that when you come to breathe your last you still will not have grasped the fact that you are an animal.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), Sancho Panza
Page Number: 680
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 30 Quotes

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 their distress for the vices, or for their virtues: the knight’s sole responsibility is to succor them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 271
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 37 Quotes

Don Quixote was developing his arguments in such an orderly and lucid way that for the time being none of those listening could believe he was a madman.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha
Related Symbols: Inns
Page Number: 355
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 45 Quotes

It is possible that, since you have not been knighted, as I have, the enchantments in this place do not affect you, and that your understanding is unclouded, and that you can form judgments about the affairs of the castle as they really and truly are, rather than as they appeared to me.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), The priest, The barber, Don Fernando, Barber 2
Related Symbols: Inns, Enchanters
Page Number: 420
Explanation and Analysis:

But one man had been plunged into the deepest depths of despair, and that was the barber, whose basin, there before his very eyes, had turned into Mambrino’s helmet, and whose pack-saddle, he was very sure, was about to turn into the splendid caparisons of some handsome steed.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha, Barber 2
Related Symbols: Inns
Page Number: 420
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 48 Quotes

…whereas drama should, as Cicero puts it, be a mirror of human life, an exemplar of customs and an image of truth, there modern plays are just mirrors of absurdity, exemplars of folly and images of lewdness.

Related Characters: The priest (speaker), Don Quixote de la Mancha, The canon
Page Number: 444
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 50 Quotes

Speaking for myself, I can say that ever since I became a knight errant I have been courageous, polite, generous, well-bred, magnanimous, courteous, bold, gentle, patient and long-suffering in the face of toil, imprisonment, and enchantment.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), The priest, The canon
Page Number: 458
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

I am merely striving to make the world understand the delusion under which it labours in not renewing within itself the happy days when the order of knight-errantry carried all before it. But these depraved times of ours do not deserve all those benefits enjoyed by the ages when knights errant accepted as their responsibility and took upon their shoulders the defense of kingdoms, the relief of damsels, the succour of orphans and wards, and chastisement of the arrogant and the rewarding of the humble.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), The barber
Page Number: 493
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 3 Quotes

It’s so very intelligible that it doesn’t pose any difficulties at all: children leaf through it, adolescents read it, grown men understand it and old men praise it, and, in short, it’s so well-thumbed and well-perused and well-known by all kinds of people that as soon as they see a skinny nag pass by they say: “Look, there goes Rocinante.” And the people who have most taken to it are the page-boys. There’s not a lord’s antechamber without its Quixote. … All in all, this history provides the most delightful and least harmful entertainment ever, because nowhere in it can one find the slightest suspicion of language that isn’t wholesome or thoughts that aren’t Catholic.

Related Characters: Sansón Carrasco (speaker), Don Quixote de la Mancha, Barber 2
Page Number: 507
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 8 Quotes

And so, O Sancho, our works must not stray beyond the limits imposed by the Christian religion that we profess. In slaying giants, we must slay pride; in our generosity and magnanimity, we must slay envy; in our tranquil demeanor and serene disposition, we must slay anger; in eating as little as we do and keeping vigil as much as we do, we must slay gluttony and somnolence; in our faithfulness to those whom we have made the mistresses of our thoughts, we must slay lewdness and lust; in wandering all over the world in search of opportunities to become famous knights as well as good Christians, we must slay sloth.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), Sancho Panza
Page Number: 536
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 17 Quotes

…he sometimes thought [Quixote] sane and sometimes mad, because what he said was coherent, elegant and well expressed, and what he did was absurd, foolhardy and stupid.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha, Don Diego de Miranda
Page Number: 598
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 24 Quotes

I cannot bring myself to believe that everything recorded in this chapter happened to the brave Don Quixote exactly as described… Yet I can’t believe that Don Quixote was lying, because he was the most honest hidalgo and the noblest knight of his time: he couldn’t have told a lie to save himself from being executed. … so I merely record it, without affirming either that it is false or that it is true.

Related Characters: Cide Hamete Benengeli (speaker), Don Quixote de la Mancha
Page Number: 648
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 31 Quotes

…Don Quixote was amazed by what was happening; and that was the first day when he was fully convinced that he was a real knight errant, not a fantasy one, seeing himself treated in the same way as he’d read that such knights used to be treated in centuries past.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha
Page Number: 693
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 32 Quotes

My intentions are always directed towards worthy ends, that is to say to do good to all and harm nobody; and whether the man who believes this, puts it into practice and devotes his life to it deserves to be called a fool is something for Your Graces, most excellent Duke and Duchess, to determine.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), The Duke and the Duchess
Page Number: 701
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 74 Quotes

My mind has been restored to me, and it is now clear and free, without those gloomy shadows of ignorance cast over me by my wretched, obsessive reading of those detestable books of chivalry. Now I can recognize their absurdity and their deceitfulness, and my only regret is that this discovery has come so late that it leaves me no time to make amends by reading other books that might be a light for my soul.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 976
Explanation and Analysis:

You must congratulate me, my good sirs, because I am no longer Don Quixote de la Mancha but Alonso Quixano, for whom my way of life earned me the nickname of “the Good”. I am now the enemy of Amadis of Gaul and the whole infinite horde or his descendants; now all those profane histories of knight-errantry are odious to me; now I acknowledge my folly and the peril in which I was placed by reading them; now, by God’s mercy, having at long last learned my lesson, I abominate them all.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 977
Explanation and Analysis:

For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; it was for him to act, for me to write; we two are one.

Related Characters: Cide Hamete Benengeli (speaker), Don Quixote de la Mancha
Page Number: 981
Explanation and Analysis:
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Don Quixote de la Mancha Quotes in Don Quixote

The Don Quixote quotes below are all either spoken by Don Quixote de la Mancha or refer to Don Quixote de la Mancha. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Truth and Lies Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

In short, our hidalgo was soon so absorbed in these books that his nights were spent reading from dusk till dawn, and his days from dawn till dusk, until the lack of sleep the excess of reading withered his brain, and he went mad. … The idea that this whole fabric of famous fabrications was real so established itself in his mind that no history in the world was truer for him.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 2 Quotes

And since whatever our adventurer thought, saw, or imagined seemed to him to be as it was in the books he’d read, as soon as he saw the inn he took it for a castle with its four towers and their spires of shining silver.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha
Related Symbols: Inns
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 4 Quotes

There is no reason why someone with a plebeian name should not be a knight, for every man is the child of his own deeds.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 8 Quotes

But Don Quixote was so convinced that they were giants that he neither heard his squire Sancho’s shouts nor saw what stood in front of him.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha, Sancho Panza
Page Number: 64
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 25 Quotes

Let me add that when a painter wants to become famous for his art, he tries to copy originals by the finest artists he knows. And this same rule holds good for nearly all the trades and professions of importance that serve to adorn a society.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 28 Quotes

An ass you are, an ass you will remain and an ass you will still be when you end your days on this earth, and it is my belief that when you come to breathe your last you still will not have grasped the fact that you are an animal.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), Sancho Panza
Page Number: 680
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 30 Quotes

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 their distress for the vices, or for their virtues: the knight’s sole responsibility is to succor them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 271
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 37 Quotes

Don Quixote was developing his arguments in such an orderly and lucid way that for the time being none of those listening could believe he was a madman.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha
Related Symbols: Inns
Page Number: 355
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 45 Quotes

It is possible that, since you have not been knighted, as I have, the enchantments in this place do not affect you, and that your understanding is unclouded, and that you can form judgments about the affairs of the castle as they really and truly are, rather than as they appeared to me.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), The priest, The barber, Don Fernando, Barber 2
Related Symbols: Inns, Enchanters
Page Number: 420
Explanation and Analysis:

But one man had been plunged into the deepest depths of despair, and that was the barber, whose basin, there before his very eyes, had turned into Mambrino’s helmet, and whose pack-saddle, he was very sure, was about to turn into the splendid caparisons of some handsome steed.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha, Barber 2
Related Symbols: Inns
Page Number: 420
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 48 Quotes

…whereas drama should, as Cicero puts it, be a mirror of human life, an exemplar of customs and an image of truth, there modern plays are just mirrors of absurdity, exemplars of folly and images of lewdness.

Related Characters: The priest (speaker), Don Quixote de la Mancha, The canon
Page Number: 444
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 50 Quotes

Speaking for myself, I can say that ever since I became a knight errant I have been courageous, polite, generous, well-bred, magnanimous, courteous, bold, gentle, patient and long-suffering in the face of toil, imprisonment, and enchantment.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), The priest, The canon
Page Number: 458
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

I am merely striving to make the world understand the delusion under which it labours in not renewing within itself the happy days when the order of knight-errantry carried all before it. But these depraved times of ours do not deserve all those benefits enjoyed by the ages when knights errant accepted as their responsibility and took upon their shoulders the defense of kingdoms, the relief of damsels, the succour of orphans and wards, and chastisement of the arrogant and the rewarding of the humble.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), The barber
Page Number: 493
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 3 Quotes

It’s so very intelligible that it doesn’t pose any difficulties at all: children leaf through it, adolescents read it, grown men understand it and old men praise it, and, in short, it’s so well-thumbed and well-perused and well-known by all kinds of people that as soon as they see a skinny nag pass by they say: “Look, there goes Rocinante.” And the people who have most taken to it are the page-boys. There’s not a lord’s antechamber without its Quixote. … All in all, this history provides the most delightful and least harmful entertainment ever, because nowhere in it can one find the slightest suspicion of language that isn’t wholesome or thoughts that aren’t Catholic.

Related Characters: Sansón Carrasco (speaker), Don Quixote de la Mancha, Barber 2
Page Number: 507
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 8 Quotes

And so, O Sancho, our works must not stray beyond the limits imposed by the Christian religion that we profess. In slaying giants, we must slay pride; in our generosity and magnanimity, we must slay envy; in our tranquil demeanor and serene disposition, we must slay anger; in eating as little as we do and keeping vigil as much as we do, we must slay gluttony and somnolence; in our faithfulness to those whom we have made the mistresses of our thoughts, we must slay lewdness and lust; in wandering all over the world in search of opportunities to become famous knights as well as good Christians, we must slay sloth.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), Sancho Panza
Page Number: 536
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 17 Quotes

…he sometimes thought [Quixote] sane and sometimes mad, because what he said was coherent, elegant and well expressed, and what he did was absurd, foolhardy and stupid.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha, Don Diego de Miranda
Page Number: 598
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 24 Quotes

I cannot bring myself to believe that everything recorded in this chapter happened to the brave Don Quixote exactly as described… Yet I can’t believe that Don Quixote was lying, because he was the most honest hidalgo and the noblest knight of his time: he couldn’t have told a lie to save himself from being executed. … so I merely record it, without affirming either that it is false or that it is true.

Related Characters: Cide Hamete Benengeli (speaker), Don Quixote de la Mancha
Page Number: 648
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 31 Quotes

…Don Quixote was amazed by what was happening; and that was the first day when he was fully convinced that he was a real knight errant, not a fantasy one, seeing himself treated in the same way as he’d read that such knights used to be treated in centuries past.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha
Page Number: 693
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 32 Quotes

My intentions are always directed towards worthy ends, that is to say to do good to all and harm nobody; and whether the man who believes this, puts it into practice and devotes his life to it deserves to be called a fool is something for Your Graces, most excellent Duke and Duchess, to determine.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker), The Duke and the Duchess
Page Number: 701
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 74 Quotes

My mind has been restored to me, and it is now clear and free, without those gloomy shadows of ignorance cast over me by my wretched, obsessive reading of those detestable books of chivalry. Now I can recognize their absurdity and their deceitfulness, and my only regret is that this discovery has come so late that it leaves me no time to make amends by reading other books that might be a light for my soul.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 976
Explanation and Analysis:

You must congratulate me, my good sirs, because I am no longer Don Quixote de la Mancha but Alonso Quixano, for whom my way of life earned me the nickname of “the Good”. I am now the enemy of Amadis of Gaul and the whole infinite horde or his descendants; now all those profane histories of knight-errantry are odious to me; now I acknowledge my folly and the peril in which I was placed by reading them; now, by God’s mercy, having at long last learned my lesson, I abominate them all.

Related Characters: Don Quixote de la Mancha (speaker)
Page Number: 977
Explanation and Analysis:

For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; it was for him to act, for me to write; we two are one.

Related Characters: Cide Hamete Benengeli (speaker), Don Quixote de la Mancha
Page Number: 981
Explanation and Analysis: