Once there was a widow who was beautiful, free, rich, and above all, easy in her ways, and she fell in love with a lay brother, a sturdy, good-looking boy; his superior learned of this, and one day he said to the good widow, in fraternal reprimand: 'I am amazed, Senora, and with reason, that a woman as distinguised, as beautiful, and as rich as your grace has fallen in love with a man as crude, as base, and as stupid as he, when there are in this house so many masters, so many scholars, so many theologians, among whom your grace could make a selection as if you were choosing pears, saying, I want this one but not the other.' But she responded with a good deal of wit and verve: 'Your grace, Senor, is very much mistaken, and you are thinking in an oldfashioned way if you think I have chosen badly, no matter how stupid he may seem to you; because considering the reason I love and want him, he knows as much philosophy as Aristotle, and even more.' In the same way, Sancho, because of my love for Dulcinea of Toboso, she is worth as much as the highest princess on earth. And yes, not every poet who praises a lady, calling her by another name, really has one. Do you think the Amaryllises, Phyllises, Sylvias, Dianas, Galateas, Alidas, and all the rest that fill books, ballads, barbershops, and theaters are really ladies of flesh and blood who belong to those who celebrate them? No, of course not, for most are imagined in order to provide a subject for their verses, and so that people will think of them as lovers and as men who have the capacity to be lovers. And therefore it is enough for me to think and believe that my good Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and virtuous; as for her lineage, it matters little, for no one is going to investigate it in order to give her a robe of office, and I can think she is the highest princess in the world. Because you should know, Sancho, if you do not know already, that two things inspire love more than any other; they are great beauty and a good name, and these two things reach their consummation in Dulcinea, for in beauty, no one is her equal, and as for a good name, few can approach her. And to conclude, I imagine that everything I say is true, no more and no less, and I depict her in my imagination as I wish her to be in beauty and in distinction, and Helen cannot approach her, Lucretia cannot match her, nor can any of the other famous women of past ages, Greek, barbarian, or Latin. Let each man say what he chooses; if because of this I am criticized by the ignorant, I shall not be chastised by the learned.


Don Quixote addressing Sancho Panza's questions about why Don Quixote is in love with Lady Dulcinea of Toboso, who is in reality a simple peasant woman named Aldonza Lorenzo. Sancho's response to Don Quixote's explination was, "I say that your grace is correct in everything, and that I am an ass". In De Cervantes, Miguel (2003.) Don Quixote. (Edith Grossman, Trans.). New York City, NY: Harper Collins (Original work published 1605, 1615) p.200-1