A Brilliant Madman

Thirty-eight percent!  That's how far I have come in Don Quixote.  I am 334 pages into a 940 page book.  That's saying something!  Even if I were to give up now, I feel like I could be proud of what I have yet accomplished.

I just finished the chapter in which Don Quixote expounded on the idea that arms are superior to letters, meaning it is better to be a soldier than a scholar.  It flies in the face of the saying, "The pen is mightier than the sword," as well as all of my personal opinions.  But he certainly speaks well in this passage.

"In this manner, and with these rational arguments, Don Quixote continued his discourse, no one listening to him in that moment could think of him as a madman; rather, since most were gentlemen engaged in the practice of arms, they were very pleased to listen" (Chapter 37, page 329).

"Those who listened to him were overwhelmed again with pity at seeing the man who apparently was intelligent and rational in all other matters could lose those faculties completely when it was a question of his accursed and bedeviled chivalry" (Chapter 38, page 333).