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 Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
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Joined: 3/26/2013 Posts: 3,432 Neurons: 343,744 Location: Minsk, Minskaya Voblasts', Belarus
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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.
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Joined: 2/21/2014 Posts: 463 Neurons: 226,313 Location: Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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I really can't stand Don Quixote. I forced myself to read through the whole book and it's extremely thick. I don't even find it funny, just plain silly. I get enraged everytime I see the title appear in lists of the best books ever written.
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Joined: 12/20/2012 Posts: 1,032 Neurons: 12,634
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To Pebbles: You probably hate [i]The Little Prince[i] as well.
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Joined: 1/28/2012 Posts: 5,045 Neurons: 34,900 Location: München, Bavaria, Germany
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Such famous old works of literature open their doors not to everyone. One does not read Don Quichote or Dantes' The Divine Comedy or Shakespeares' plays as you read a modern crime novel. Introduction by experts is necessary, only then you discover the beauties and the value of such older works of literature. But you may believe the specialists, they are masterworks.
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Joined: 1/28/2012 Posts: 5,045 Neurons: 34,900 Location: München, Bavaria, Germany
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Don Quichote illustrationDon Quijote and Sancho Panza, Gustave Doré, 1863.
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Joined: 9/21/2012 Posts: 4,668 Neurons: 22,062
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I interpret it this way:
Take care, you ordinary people, those politicians whom you admire so much are not sincere but just hypocritical pretenders.
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Joined: 9/9/2010 Posts: 1,937 Neurons: 45,980 Location: Orange, New South Wales, Australia
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Daemon wrote:Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) 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."
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Joined: 6/23/2011 Posts: 567 Neurons: 170,308 Location: Orillia, Ontario, Canada
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I tried to read Don Quixote, but failed miserably.
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Joined: 3/29/2014 Posts: 333 Neurons: 23,588 Location: Cairo, Al Qahirah, Egypt
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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.
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Joined: 12/26/2010 Posts: 538 Neurons: 23,973 Location: Hebron, Connecticut, United States
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I have yet to read Don Quixote--too busy reading Anna Karenina for the third time.
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Joined: 3/29/2014 Posts: 2 Neurons: 150 Location: Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
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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.
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Joined: 5/14/2010 Posts: 2,401 Neurons: 11,668
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We must be wary of our own perceptions.
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Joined: 2/4/2014 Posts: 8,445 Neurons: 6,967,411 Location: Bogotá, Bogota D.C., Colombia
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"...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.
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Joined: 10/3/2012 Posts: 2,244 Neurons: 248,867
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Daemon wrote:Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Sancho Panza's warning unheeded, Don Quixote charged at the closest windmill thinking it was a giant, only to be thrown off his horse with a shattered lance. His answer to Panza's reproach for not listening put a nice twist to Don Quixote's delusion, not unlike other delusions, having the capability to re-invent itself: ""Hush, friend Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "the fortunes of war more than any other are liable to frequent fluctuations; and moreover I think, and it is the truth, that that same sage Friston who carried off my study and books, has turned these giants into mills in order to rob me of the glory of vanquishing them, such is the enmity he bears me; but in the end his wicked arts will avail but little against my good sword."" Isn't that the cleverest explanation for the perpetual "knight errantry" of our own war-hungry Dons, tilting at everything in sight?
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Joined: 3/3/2014 Posts: 194 Neurons: 34,034 Location: Liverpool, England, United Kingdom
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These stories never really attracted me to even try and read them. Maybe one day!
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Joined: 2/18/2013 Posts: 495 Neurons: 28,396 Location: San Salvador, San Salvador, El Salvador
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Daemon wrote:Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) --- Mire vuestra merced, respondió Sancho, que aquellos que allí se parecen no son gigantes, sino molinos de viento...--- I do think so, Verbatim. Your participation helps the ones who haven't read the book yet. The reading of chilvary books fed his fairytale mind everyday. Madness took him. Fantastic tales of chivalry were his life, and he certainly lived between such lines. "As you think, you shall become" right? A knightly life was calling; he did what he believed. After all, how many people do you know that actually live their dreams and go out to reach them? In madness, he was truly living, unlike so many myriads of people that I know. Yes, they took away his books and had a momentary lapse of reason. But a knight he was, an errant knight by right of passion and commitment. How could he throw it away for the life of a common man in a town! Then you have to ask yourself: wasn't he a knight? What was him without his tales and monsters? That was his life, and when a man is being robbed of his life...what kind of man he becomes? Madness was his christ, salvation and heaven. We all have our fairytales, whether they be christianity, our philosophy, our passions, our mistakes.
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Joined: 5/14/2012 Posts: 76 Neurons: 373,312 Location: Suchitoto, Cuscatlan, El Salvador
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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.
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Joined: 3/5/2014 Posts: 35 Neurons: 6,624 Location: West Hartford, Connecticut, United States
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Don Quixote was an idealist idit(thats how I saw idiot).
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Joined: 2/21/2014 Posts: 463 Neurons: 226,313 Location: Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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rogermue wrote:Such famous old works of literature open their doors not to everyone. One does not read Don Quichote or Dantes' The Divine Comedy or Shakespeares' plays as you read a modern crime novel. Introduction by experts is necessary, only then you discover the beauties and the value of such older works of literature. But you may believe the specialists, they are masterworks. 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.
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Joined: 2/21/2014 Posts: 463 Neurons: 226,313 Location: Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Miriam... wrote:To Pebbles: You probably hate [i]The Little Prince[i] as well. I've not read it but it's the type I avoid. I like literary realism. Have you read Stendhal's The Red and the Black? That's more my kind of a book. Books like Middlemarch, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment and A Raw Youth have an impact on me I won't even try to describe.
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curmudgeonine wrote:I tried to read Don Quixote, but failed miserably. 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.
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Joined: 1/26/2014 Posts: 309 Neurons: 11,475 Location: Steubenville, Ohio, United States
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Wow. You all have just told me I need to read more.
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Joined: 10/3/2012 Posts: 2,244 Neurons: 248,867
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Daemon wrote:Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) 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!
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