"I tell thee, friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that it is as certain they are asses, as that I am Don Quixote and thou Sancho Panza;—at least, so they seem to me."
"Sir," quoth Sancho, "say not such a thing; but snuff those eyes of yours, and come and pay reverence to the mistress of your soul." So saying he advanced forward to meet the peasant girls, and, alighting from Dapple, he laid hold of one of their asses by the halter, and bending both knees to the ground, said to the girl: "Queen, princess, and duchess of beauty, let your haughtiness and greatness be pleased to receive into grace and good-liking your captive knight, who stands turned there into stone, all disorder, and without any pulse, to find himself before your magnificent presence. I am Sancho Panza, his squire, and he is that way-worn knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, otherwise called the Knight of the Sorrowful Figure."
It is not courage, but rashness, for one man singly to encounter an army, where death is present, and where emperors fight in person, assisted by good and bad angels.
Good Christians should never revenge injuries.
A sparrow in the hand is better than a vulture on the wing.
At the conclusion of this drama of life, death strips us of the robes which make the difference between man and man, and leaves us all on one level in the grave.