Don Quixote

 

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I wrote an Honors English paper on Don Quixote as an undergraduate. I never actually read it. What's more, I got an A, which means my professor had probably never read it either. So now, about 30 years later I can finally say I've read it. When you consider that this was written in 1605-1615, it really holds up remarkably well. There is something undeniably inspiring in a person who follows their dreams especially in the face of naysayers. What I loved is how in part 2, Quixote actually becomes a knight for all intents and purposes, as people start treating him that way. In fact, everything he sets out to do, he does. Plenty of humor, entertaining anecdotes, and wise words. If it goes just a bit too long, most good novels do.

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“It is your fear, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that keeps you from seeing or hearing properly, because one of the effects of fear is to cloud the senses and make things appear other than they are;

His only obligation is to help them because they are in need, turning his eyes to their suffering and not their wickedness.

Second Part of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

the madness of the master, without the simplicity of the servant, would not be worth anything.”

Not all those called knights are knights through and through; some are gold, others alchemical, and all appear to be knights, but not all can pass a test by touch-stone. 3

there is no poet who is not arrogant and does not think himself the greatest poet in the world.”

deceivers are as mad as the deceived,

when I’m busy digging I never think about my better half, I mean my Teresa Panza, and I love her more than my eyelashes.”