Don Quixote

The exercise of my profession will not permit or allow me to go in any other manner. Revels, feasting, and repose were invented by effeminate courtiers; but, toil, anxiety, and arms are peculiar to those whom the world calls knights-errant, of which order I, though unworthy, and the least, am one.

True as it is, at the second application, Sancho fell to the earth: a misfortune that also happened to his master; who, in spite of all his own address, together with the assistance of his good friend, soon found himself stretched at the feet of Rocinante, who had not as yet been able to rise: from whence we may learn, what furious execution is often done by pack-staves, when managed by the hands of such enraged clowns.

Thou must know, friend Sancho, answered Don Quixote, that the life of a knight-errant is subject to a thousand dangers and mishaps; but then, he enjoys the self-same chance of being a king or emperor, as experience demonstrates to have been the case of various and sundry knights, the history of whose lives I am perfectly well acquainted with[.]