1547 – 1616
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (29 September 1547 – 23 April 1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet and playwright. He is most famous for his novel Don Quixote, or Don Quijote de la Mancha, which is considered by many to be the first modern novel, one of the greatest works in Western literature, and the greatest of the Spanish language.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Remember that if a man seeks the impossible, the possible may justly be denied him; a poet said it better when he wrote:
I search for life in dread death,
in fearful disease for health,
in dark prison for liberty,
escape in a sealed room,
in a traitor, loyalty.
But my own fate from whom
I ne’er hope for the good
has with just heaven ruled:
if the impossible I demand,
for me the possible is banned.
"...I implore your grace to have the goodness to show us a portrait of this lady, even if it is no larger than a grain of wheat; for with a single thread one has the entire skein, and we will be satisfied and certain, and your grace will be recompensed and requited, and although I believe we are so partial to your position that even if her portrait shows us that she is blind in one eye and that blood and brimstone flow from the other, despite all that, to please your grace, we will praise her in everything you might wish."
"Nothing flows from her, vile rabble," replied Don Quixote, burning with rage. "Nothing flows from her, I say, but amber and delicate musk; and she is not blind or humpbacked but as upright as a peak of the Guadarramas. But you will pay for how you have blasphemed against beauty as extraordinary as that of my lady!"
And, having said this, he lowered his lance and charged the man who had spoken, with so much rage and fury that if, to the daring merchant's good fortune, Rocinante had not tripped and fallen on the way, things would have gone badly for him.