The wounds received in battle bestow honor, they do not take it away... - Miguel de Cervantes

We have not run across anyone,” responded Don Quixote, “but we found a saddle cushion and traveling case not far from here.” “I found them, too,” responded the goatherd, “but I never wanted to pick them up or go near them because I was afraid there’d be trouble and they’d say I stole them; the devil’s sly, and he puts things under our feet that make us stumble and fall, and we don’t know how or why.

On the one hand they regarded him as a man of wit and sense, and on the other he seemed to them a maundering blockhead, and they could not make up their minds whereabouts between wisdom and folly they ought to place him.

He ... got the better of himself, and that's the best kind of victory one can wish for.