Second Book, Chapter 1

...desirous to learn really and truly all the life and miracles of our famous Spaniard, Don Quixote of the Mancha, the light and mirror of all Manchical chivalry, being the first who, in this our age and time, so full of calamities, did undergo the travels and exercise of arms-errant; and undid wrongs, succored widows, protected damsels that rode up and down with their whips and palfreys, and with all their virginity on their backs, from hill to hill and dale to dale; for, if it happened not that some lewd miscreant, or some clown with a hatchet and long hair, or some monstrous giant, did force them, damsels there were in times past that at the end of fourscore years old, all which time they never slept one day under a roof, went as entire and pure maidens to their graves as the very mother that bore them...

They just don't write em like that anymore. :)

"For the tender caress of the beautiful brown eyes of my lady Dulcinea del Toboso.This knight of the woeful countenance would defend your honor against those Toledoen braggards for what is left when honor is lost.Squire Sancho! prepare Rocinante and bring my sheild and lance we have great deeds to do on this day and the sun is already high in the sky this is good day to die is not Sancho?" "not as good as tomorrow might be sire" 

Not a quote necessarily more of a poor homage to the romanticism the strange wisdom and the sense of honor and duty and humor Cervantes created in Don Quixote and Sancho Panza .

Quixote fans....

Would you agree with this assesment?

"...just as Don Quixote is not the main character in Cervantes’ great tale of the knight errant. He represents the ideal, but he is more a symbol than an actual embodiment of the ideal. He is not quite human. The human character is Sancho Panza, who believes in the ideal, defends the ideal, but lives in the real world. It is Sancho Panza’s story. "

I read this in a lecture (Lecture 50) by Dale Ahlquist on the novel by G.K. Chesterton: "The Return of Don Quixote"

Anyone read this novel? (I haven't but may if I get positive feedback here)

Any thoughts?