Lancelot and Galahad

Usage examples of knights.

Then listen carefully and you will see how in the blink of an eye I confound all your difficulties and remedy all the problems that you say bewilder you and make you fearful to bring to light the history of your famous Don Quixote, the paragon and model of all knights errant.

I shall tell thee the boon that I would ask of thee and thy generosity has granted me, and it is that on the morrow thou wilt dub me a knight, and that this night in the chapel of thy castle I shall keep vigil over my armor, and on the morrow, as I have said, what I fervently desire will be accomplished so that I can, as I needs must do, travel the four corners of the earth in search of adventures on behalf of those in need, this being the office of chivalry and of knights errant, for I am one of them and my desire is disposed to such deeds.

Don Quixote shouted even louder, calling them perfidious traitors and saying that the lord of the castle was a varlet and a discourteous knight for allowing knights errant to be so badly treated, and that if he had already received the order of chivalry, he would enlighten him as to the full extent of his treachery.

I tell you the truth, my friend, when I say that because of its style, this is the best book in the world: in it knights eat, and sleep, and die in their beds, and make a will before they die, and do everything else that all the other books of this sort leave out.

Senor Archbishop Turpin, it is a great discredit to those of us called the Twelve Peers to do nothing more and allow the courtier knights victory in this tourney, when we, the knights who seek adventures, have won glory on the three previous days.

I do not complain about the pain, it is because it is not the custom of knights errant to complain about any wound, even if their innards are spilling out because of it.

I have, unless what you said about not complaining also applies to the squires of knights errant.

It was for their protection, as time passed and wickedness spread, that the order of knights errant was instituted: to defend maidens, protect widows, and come to the aid of orphans and those in need.

For, although by natural law all men are obliged to favor knights errant, still, because I know that without knowing this obligation you welcomed me and treated me so generously, I wish, with all my goodwill, to thank you for yours.

Tranquility, luxury, and repose were invented for pampered courtiers, but travail, tribulation, and arms were invented and created only for those whom the world calls knights errant, and I, although unworthy, am the least of that number.

This, then, gentlemen, is what it means to be a knight errant, and the order of chivalry is just as I have said, and in it, as I have also said, I, though a sinner, have taken my vows, professing exactly what was professed by the knights I have mentioned.

I mean to say that the religious, in absolute peace and tranquility, ask heaven for the well-being of the world, but we soldiers and knights effect what they ask, defending the world with the valor of our good right arms and the sharp edge of our swords, not protected by a roof but under the open sky, subject to the unbearable rays of the sun in summer and the icy blasts of winter.

I wish only to suggest, given what I must suffer, that it is undoubtedly more toilsome and more difficult, more subject to hunger and thirst, more destitute, straitened, and impoverished, for there can be no doubt that knights errant in the past endured many misfortunes in the course of their lives.

I can see, Sancho my friend, these are not knights but base people of low breeding.

And I could tell you now, if the pain I feel would allow, of some who, by the sheer valor of their mighty arm, have risen to the high estates I have mentioned to you, and yet, both before and afterward, these same knights have borne all manner of calamities and miseries.