Do not all men belong more or less to one type or another? Does not each one of us side either with Don Quixote or with Hamlet? Today Hamlets outnumber Don Quixotes, though Quixotes are still to be found. The fact is there will always be two ways of conceiving the ideal: one as outside human nature, the other as within—that is, either the “I “ in the individual will preponderate, or something outside the “I,” which the individual prefers to the “I.” These two ways of conceiving the ideal, ways which in life can alternate in one and the same individual, are incarnate in these two contrary types: Hamlet and Don Quixote.
ATTRIBUTION:
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883), Russian author. Hamlet and Don Quixote, ch. 1 (1860, trans. 1930).
