DON QUIXOTE

Back Forward Menu

not, and any pedants or bachelors should attack you and question the
fact, never care two maravedis for that, for even if they prove a lie
against you they cannot cut off the hand you wrote it with.

"As to references in the margin to the books and authors from whom you
take the aphorisms and sayings you put into your story, it is only
contriving to fit in nicely any sentences or scraps of Latin you may
happen to have by heart, or at any rate that will not give you much
trouble to look up; so as, when you speak of freedom and captivity, to
insert

_Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro;_

and then refer in the margin to Horace, or whoever said it; or, if you
allude to the power of death, to come in with--

_Pallida mors Aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,