The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete
The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete
Translated by John Ormsby
The greatest joke in literature also happens to be its greatest tragedy. Don Quixote, an aging gentleman from La Mancha, has read so many chivalric romances that he loses his grip on reality and decides to become a knight-errant. He dons rusted armor, renames his nag Rocinante, and rides off into the Spanish countryside to revive chivalric virtue, thrashing windmills he believes to be giants, mistaking brothels for castles, declaring a peasant girl his fair lady Dulcinea del Toboso. His long-suffering squire Sancho Panza, a farmer of plain wit and endless patience, accompanies him not out of belief but out of loyalty, or perhaps because Quixote's madness reveals truths that sanity conceals. Together they bicker, reconcile, get beaten up, and stumble through a world that cannot decide whether to laugh or weep. Cervantes understood something essential: that we all construct our own realities, that stories shape the world more than facts, that the person who sees what isn't there may also see what everyone else misses. Four centuries later, this novel remains a mirror held up to every dreamer, every idealist, every person who has ever insisted that the world should be better than it is.
Editions
X-Ray
“I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“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.””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“En un lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme...””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“¿Qué gigantes?””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“La razón de la sinrazón que a mi razón se hace, de tal manera mi razón enflaquece, que con razón me quejo de la vuestra fermosura. Y también cuando””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“-Mira, Sancho, por el mesmo que denantes juraste te juro - dijo don Quijote - que tienes el más corto entendimiento que tiene ni tuvo escudero en el mundo. ¿Que es posible que en cuanto ha que andas conmigo no has echado de ver que todas las cosas de los caballeros andantes parecen quimeras, necedades y desatinos, y que son todas hechas al revés? Y no porque sea ello ansí, sino porque andan entre nosotros siempre una caterva de encantadores, que todas nuestras cosas mudan y truecan, y les vuelven según su gusto, y según tienen la gana de favorecernos o destruirnos; y así, eso que a ti te parece bacía de barbero, me parece a mí el yelmo de Mambrino, y a otro le parecerá otra cosa.””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“Tú, con tu señor a acuestas; y yo, encima de ti, citando el oficio para que Dios me echó al mundo. (Don Quijote)””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“Thy false promise, and my certain misfortune, do carry me to such a place, as from thence thou shalt sooner receive news of my death than reasons of my just complaints. Thou hast disdained me, O ingrate! for one that hath more, but not for one that is worth more than I am; but if virtue were a treasure of estimation, I would not emulate other men’s fortunes, nor weep thus for mine own misfortunes. That which thy beauty erected, thy works have overthrown; by it I deemed thee to be an angel, and by these I certainly know thee to be but a woman. Rest in peace, O causer of my war! and let Heaven work so that thy spouse’s deceits remain still concealed, to the end thou mayst not repent what thou didst, and I be constrained to take revenge of that I desire not.””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“Everyone is the son of his works.””
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
