Edsverb
Play
The archive, at your fingertips
Try an author, a thought, or a phrase in “quotes”.↑ ↓ Navigate · Esc Close

0 words found

Explore all results ↗

The voices / 45 fragments

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

1547 AD — 1616 AD

Don Quixote challenges the enslavement of prisoners and discusses the qualifications of a governor. Read these judgments within comic confrontations whose consequences complicate the knight’s confidence.

Author and source reference ↗
▷ Play this voiceSearch within this voice ↗Place in time ↗lifedeathmindtruthlovefaithfriendshipknowledge

Life and writing

The catalogue identifies Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra with lifetime years 1547–1616 and credits John Ormsby as the English translator of Don Quixote. David Widger receives digital credit. The catalogue points to other improved electronic editions, which were not checked for this profile. This specific linked text supplies two selected counterparts. Its HTML ISBN identifies the electronic edition; no underlying print publisher is established. Other similarly named archive labels are not merged.

Project Gutenberg catalogue — Don Quixote ↗Checked related reading — Don Quixote ↗ Catalogue identity/lifetime and linked edition credits, framing or cast

In Part I, Chapter XXII, Don Quixote tells the guards that it is hard to make slaves of people whom God and nature have made free. His demand for release and the ensuing confrontation matter when interpreting that declaration. In Part II, Chapter XXXII, he discusses Sancho’s promised government with the duke, arguing that good intentions and advisers can compensate for limited learning and warning against bribes. The comic setting prevents these speeches from becoming simple legal or educational instructions. Both selected extracts match Ormsby’s English text under limited normalization.

Checked related reading — Don Quixote ↗ Part I, Chapter XXII; Don Quixote addresses the galley prisoners’ guards; Part II, Chapter XXXII; Don Quixote discusses Sancho’s promised government

Reading this voice

Read the galley-prisoner encounter through its consequences and the discussion of government through its warnings about conduct. Preserve Don Quixote as the speaker; neither passage establishes Cervantes’s own political advice without further evidence.

Subjects to explore

Editorial reading connections, distinct from the archive’s word matching.

freedomjusticeleadership

A work to read

Begin with these archive passages

Editorial starting points from this author’s existing entries.

Profile sources and editorial status

Original agent-assisted editorial profile, checked 2026-10-05. No human review is recorded. Life dates are recorded to the year; they do not date individual quotations.

  • Project Gutenberg catalogue — Don Quixote ↗

    Checked identity/lifetime, specific digital edition, any supplied HTML ISBN and US-public-domain basis. Automatic synopsis and digital dates do not establish quotation wording or composition dates. Reference checked 2026-10-05.

  • Checked related reading — Don Quixote ↗

    Complete selected English extracts, adjacent speaker/context and available edition credits checked. Limited normalization; no whole-corpus authentication or human review. Reference checked 2026-10-05.

Archive entries

13Undated
Sometimes when a father has an ugly, loutish son, the love he bears him so blindfolds his eyes that he does not see his defects, or, rather, takes them for gifts and charms of mind and body, and talks of them to his friends as wit and grace. I, however—for though I pass for the father, I am but the stepfather to "Don Quixote"—have no desire to go with the current of custom, or to implore thee, dearest reader, almost with tears in my eyes, as others do, to pardon or excuse the defects thou wilt perceive in this child of mine. Thou art neither its kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and thy will as free as any man's, whate'er he be, thou art in thine own house and master of it as much as the king of his taxes and thou knowest the common saying, "Under my cloak I kill the king;" all which exempts and frees thee from every consideration and obligation, and thou canst say what thou wilt of the story without fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good thou mayest say of it.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra / quote
↗
15Undated
Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man. And when we focus our attention upon that beauty, not upon the physical, love generally arises with great violence and intensity. I am well aware that I am not handsome, but I also know that I am not deformed, and it is enough for a man of worth not to be a monster for him to be dearly loved, provided he has those spiritual endowments I have spoken of.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra / quote
↗
17Undated
In any case, Cide Hamete Benengeli was a very careful historian, and very accurate in all things, as can be clearly seen in the details he relates to us, for although they are trivial and inconsequential, he does not attempt to pass over them in silence; his example could be followed by solemn historians who recount actions so briefly and succinctly that we can barely taste them, and leave behind in the inkwell, through carelessness, malice, or ignorance, the most substantive part of the work.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra / quote
↗
21Undated
If one were to reply that those who compose these books write them as fictions, and therefore are not obliged to consider the fine points of truth, I should respond that the more truthful the fiction, the better it is, and the more probable and possible, the more pleasing. Fictional tales must engage the minds of those who read them, and by restraining exaggeration and moderating impossibility, they enthrall the spirit and thereby astonish, captivate, delight, and entertain, allowing wonder and joy to move together at the same pace; none of these things can be accomplished by fleeing verisimilitude and mimesis, which together constitute perfection in writing.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra / quote
↗

Read further

Follow a checked source edition or explore related works. Each book labels its connection to this reading.