Daily Inspiration Quote by Miguel de Cervantes

Cervantes is taking a swipe at the kind of person who treats conversation like a musket: always firing, rarely aiming. He grants proverbs a narrow legitimacy - "aptly and reasonably applied" - then pivots to the real target: compulsive quotation as a substitute for thought. The phrasing "discharging them" is doing heavy work. It turns homespun wisdom into loud, mechanical force, suggesting that stock sayings can be social violence: they shut down nuance, end arguments by fiat, and let the speaker posture as worldly without taking any real risk.

The subtext is class and taste, too. Proverbs are folk currency; "insipid and vulgar" signals anxiety about how language marks refinement. Cervantes isn't condemning popular wisdom so much as condemning its lazy deployment, the way a proverb can function like a ready-made moral that spares you from listening. In a culture saturated with received sayings, the person who "forever" quotes them becomes a parody of wisdom, mistaking repetition for insight.

Context matters: Don Quixote is famously crowded with characters who speak in proverbs, most notably Sancho Panza, whose barrage is both endearing and absurd. Cervantes is writing at the hinge between medieval authority and modern skepticism; he loves the texture of common speech while exposing how formulaic language can become a crutch. The line reads like a defense of living conversation against canned certainty - a 17th-century warning about going viral with someone else's words.