Why bother at all, if those are not giants but windmills? Windmills, as I know, don't have malice intentions or craving to kill. Those are giant toys for the grown up yet child.

To Pebbles: You probably hate [i]The Little Prince[i] as well.

Don Quichote illustration
Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, Gustave Doré, 1863.

Was this not where the saying 'tilting at windmills' originated.

Meaning; Attacking imaginary enemies.

Origin;
Tilting at windmills. Tilting is jousting. 'Tilting at windmills' derives from Cervantes' Don Quixote - first published in 1604, under the title The Ingenious Knight of La Mancha. The novel recounts the exploits of would-be knight 'Don Quixote' and his loyal servant Sancho Panza who propose to fight injustice through chivalry. It is considered one of the major literary masterpieces and remains a best seller in numerous translations. In the book, which also gives us the adjective quixotic (striving for visionary ideals), the eponymous hero imagines himself to be fighting giants when he attacks windmills.

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."

"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.

"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length."

"Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone."

The figurative reference to tilting at windmills came a little later. John Cleveland published The character of a London diurnall in 1644 (a diurnall was, as you might expect, part-way between a diary or journal):

"The Quixotes of this Age fight with the Wind-mills of their owne Heads."

The full form of the phrase isn't used until towards the end of the 19th century; for example, in The New York Times, April 1870:

"They [Western Republicans] have not thus far had sufficient of an organization behind them to make their opposition to the Committee's bill anything more than tilting at windmills."

i thought he meant that even those who have power and influence get their supremacy from others . for that reason we dont have to be blind and follow them for no reason.

The way I see it is that Don Quixote read so many books about knights errant and damsels in distress that it addled his brain. I have read it several times and thoroughly enjoy it.

"...En un lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme,
no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero,
adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.
Una olla de algo más vaca que carnero, salpicón las más noches,
duelos y quebrantos los sábados, lentejas los viernes,
algún palomino de añadidura los domingos, consumían las tres partes de su hacienda.
El resto della concluían sayo de velarte, calzas de velludo para las fiestas,
con sus pantuflos de lo mesmo, y los días de entresemana se honraba
con su vellori de lo más fino..."
((Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.....)
(MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Cáp. I.)

Cervantes wrote his work in a form of Old Castilian, the medieval form of the Spanish language. The language of Don Quixote, although still containing archaisms, is far more understandable to modern Spanish readers than is, for instance, the completely medieval Spanish of the Poema de mio Cid, a kind of Spanish that is as different from Cervantes's language as Middle English is from Modern English. The Old Castilian language was also used to show the higher class that came with being a knight errant.

These stories never really attracted me to even try and read them. Maybe one day!

It takes us, Spanish speaking people, more than one reading to get the gist of Don Quixote. But it is a treat because it is a funny and insightful book.

A person who doesn't like Don Quixote isn't necessarily the type who can only enjoy fluff. My favourite books of fiction are Middlemarch and those written by Dostoevsky precisely because they are antithetical to the fluffy Don Quixote, where life is not depicted by lighthearted prancing but painted in dark severity.

I highly commend your "failure". I forced myself to read the book in its entirety and what did I get? Well, I was going to say nothing in the least but I actually did get something. I realise now the importance of finding our niche in the wide literary world.

There is this character in the TV series Lost, a Scots I believe, who carried a Dickens novel with him everywhere he went. He explained that he loved the works of Dickens so much that he had saved the one last Dickens novel which he had not read so as to savour the thought of reading it one day. This scene really sticks out in my mind. When I saw it, I really envied the man for finding an author he could love so much.

I believe I have found this author for myself. It's Dostoevsky. Even though I am only reading my fourth Dostoevsky and have quite some way to go before I reach the final book, I am already beginning to dread that day.

So what I'm saying is we should all look for the kind of books we really will love. Don't let these "failures" bother us for they only point us in the right direction.

Don Quixote, in love with Dulcinea,
Tilted at windmills, for the lack of giants...

That's all that matters, that they even dared,
Standing with long arms, as if I really cared
That they were but sails of the windmills...
No cost is ever too high, nor must be spared.
Take care Sancho Panza, you seem to be scared!