Before starting, I feel the whole key to understanding Don Quixote lies in these words by Pirandello:
"The humor is different from the comic. The comic is a warning to the contrary that arises from the contrast between appearance and reality. That is when you feel that something is the opposite of what should be and what provokes laughter. The humor is the feeling instead of the opposite hand that comes from reflection: reflecting on why a person or situation is the opposite of how they should be, to laughter takes over bitter feeling of pity."That is to say, the never ending discrepancy between reality and imagination and dreams and aspirations. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza represent the condition of human life. After all Don Quixote is not funny at all, it's more tragic than Romeo and Juliet could ever be.
Anyway, let's go to the quotations:
- “Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” To explain how Don Quixote went crazy and to tell myself I should sleep more and sometimes even read less.
- “Wit and humor do not reside in slow minds.”
- “Muchos son los andantes," dijo Sancho. "Muchos," respondió don Quijote, "pero pocos los que merecen nombre de caballeros.”
- “What intelligent things you say sometimes ! One would think you had studied.” The literary version of "I didn't think you were that smart".
- “...without intelligence, there can be no humour.”
- “Laughter distances us from that which is ugly and therefore potentially distressing, and indeed enables us to obtain paradoxical pleasure and therapeutic benefit from it.”
- “(...) porque la mayor locura que puede hacer un hombre en esta vida es dejarse morir sin más ni más, sin que nadie le mate ni otras manos le acaben que las de la melancolía.”
- “Don't you be worried or annoyed, Sancho, about any comments you hear, or there will never be an end to them. Keep a safe conscience and let people say what they like: trying to still gossips' tongues is like putting up doors in open fields. If the governor leaves office rich they say he's a thief, and if he leaves it poor they say he's a milksop and a fool.”
- “Love is invisible, and comes in and goes out as he likes, without anyone calling him to account for what he does.” After all, Don Quixote is doing anything for his Dulcinea del Toboso.
- “Do you mean to say that the story is finished?” said Don Quixote. “As finished as my mother,” said Sancho.”
+1 Probably the most known scene from the world literature.
“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quijote, "you don't know much about adventures."
The same episode set in our modern world.
