Ridiculous Men
In Which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza Discuss Important Matters
The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to make oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule.1
— Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at a Crossroad by Wilhelm Marstrand, after 1847, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Image has been altered…
Transcription
What is wrong, Sancho my friend?
Señor Don Quixote, they say we are ridiculous men.
Ha, ha! Blessed Sancho, we are! Why does it bother you?
Señor Don Quixote, they say we’re fools, that we will never save the world.
Good Sancho, of course we will save the world!
But how can we, Señor Don Quixote, how can we?
Brother Sancho, we fight for love, for Dulcinea. And love cannot fail. Love will not fail.
Notes
Unamuno, Miguel De; The Tragic Sense of Life; Dover Publications, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1954 (originally published in English in 1921). Translator: J. E. Crawford Flitch. p. 315.