Why that hot chick/dude doesn't dig you: 1605

Heaven, as you say, made me handsome, and to such a degree, that my beauty influences you to love me whether you will or no. And in return for the love you bear me, you pretend and insist that I am bound to love you. I know by the natural sense God has given me, that whatever is beautiful is amiable; but I do not comprehend that merely for being loved the person that is loved for being handsome is obliged to return love for love. Besides, it may chance that the lover of the beautiful person may be ugly; and what is ugly deserving to be loathed, it would sound oddly to say, I love you for being handsome; you must love me though I am ugly.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

And this was in a comedy!

Legalizing prostitution: 1605

"...for the office of a pimp is not a slight business, but an employment fit only for discreet persons, and a most necessary one in a well-regulated commonwealth; and none but persons well-born ought to exercise it; and in truth there should be inspectors and comptrollers of it, as there are of other offices, with a certain number of them deputed, like exchange-brokers; by which means many mischiefs would be prevented which now happen..."

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

The Game: 1605

And so, in process of time, the devil, who sleeps not, and troubles all things, brought it about, that the love which the shepherd bore to the shepherdess, was converted into mortal hatred; and the cause, according to evil tongues, was a certain quantity of little jealousies she gave him, beyond measure: and so much did he hate her from thenceforward, that, to avoid the sight of her, he chose to absent himself from that country, and go where his eyes should never behold her more. Torralva, who found herself disdained by Lope, presently began to love him better than ever she had loved him before." — "It is a natural quality of women," said Don Quixote, "to slight those who love them, and love those who slight them: go on, Sancho."

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

Of course Don Quixote would say something like that. Everything a knight-errant did was to pick up a chick, why shouldn't they be pick-up artists?

The poor: 1605

In the meantime Don Quixote tampered with a labourer, a neighbor of his, and an honest man (if such an epithet may be given to one that is poor), but very shallow-brained.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

The elite today would never say such a thing, but they sure seem to act like they think it's true.

Literacy problems: 1605

You must know, then, that this gentleman, at times when he was idle, which was most part of the year, gave himself up to the reading of books of chivalry, with so much attachment and relish, that he almost forgot all the sports of the field, and even the management of his domestic affairs: and his curiosity and extravagant fondness herein arrived to such a pitch, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of Knight-errantry, and carried home all he could lay hands on of that kind....

...With this kind of language the poor gentleman lost his wits, and distracted himself to comprehend and unravel their meaning; which was more than Aristotle himself could do, were he to rise again from the dead for that purpose alone.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

"Don't read too much kids, it'll make you poor and might just make you go insane!"

I like anything that begins so subversively.