How to Use Don Quixote in a Sentence

Don Quixote

noun
  • Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.
    — Matthew Futterman, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2026
  • Against this backdrop, Manolo Bez plays the role of Don Quixote.
    — Matthew Carey, Deadline, 18 Aug. 2025
  • Rocinante, the steed Don Quixote rode in search of his Dulcinea.
    — Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles Times, 20 Sep. 2022
  • That it’s bound to failure is what makes Don Quixote so terribly sad.
    — Ed Simon september 22, Literary Hub, 22 Sep. 2025
  • Of course, that Don Quixote dry western vibe is not easy to pull off when nothing is… well, dry.
    — Dalton Ross, EW.com, 26 Aug. 2025
  • Rushdie’s sprawling picaresque is, as the title promises, a riff on Don Quixote.
    — Erin Somers, The Atlantic, 6 Jan. 2026
  • How the kidnapping of Miguel de Cervantes shaped Don Quixote.
    — Literary Hub, 22 Sep. 2025
  • Like some academics, the knight-errant Don Quixote also lived in a fantasy world.
    — James Broughel, Forbes, 11 Nov. 2022
  • The prologue gives us Don Quixote in his old-fashioned study/bedroom dreaming of knight errantry.
    — Jeffrey Gantz, BostonGlobe.com, 17 Mar. 2023
  • Writers have always been more Don Quixote than Sancho Panza.
    — Rowan Jacobsen, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Perhaps Albacete could even emulate Don Quixote.
    — Guillermo Rai, New York Times, 3 Feb. 2026
  • Binet ends by slyly inviting us to imagine Don Quixote, tilting at Aztec pyramids.
    — New York Times, 14 Sep. 2021
  • Don Quixote is about refusing to see the world in its actual grubby reality; to rather gild it in the beauties of our own invention.
    — Ed Simon september 22, Literary Hub, 22 Sep. 2025
  • The epic offers a dreamy, dramatic take on Miguel de Cervantes, the fella behind Don Quixote.
    — Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 23 Sep. 2025
  • Their encounter leads to the creation of a Don Quixote-like duo with all the makings of an absolute commercial failure, the synopsis says.
    — John Hopewell, Variety, 29 Nov. 2022
  • Particularly striking, both here and in Don Quixote, was the array of orchestral colors.
    — Dallas News, 30 Sep. 2022
  • In fact, some of the greatest novels are about how reading ruins lives—starting with the book often considered the first modern novel, Don Quixote.
    — Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic, 2 Jan. 2026
  • Spoiler alert on this 400-year-old novel, but Don Quixote doesn't actually slay any giants or rescue any princesses.
    — Meg Anderson, NPR, 22 Mar. 2026
  • From his bed, the boy tells stories to Dmitri and other young visitors, among them children from the dance academy and the orphanage, about Don Quixote.
    — Christian Lorentzen, Harper's Magazine, 18 Aug. 2020
  • Success finally came with Don Quixote, a novel about a knight-errant whose adventures are inspired by the author’s earlier days.
    — René Ostberg, Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 May 2026
  • Nonetheless, the two become close, to the degree that they are compared to Don Quixote and his faithful servant Sancho Panza.
    — Frank Scheck, HollywoodReporter, 23 Oct. 2025
  • Morgus' chaotic wig was supposed to symbolize the genius of Einstein, and his endless questing on behalf of humanity was a nod to Don Quixote.
    — Doug MacCash | Staff Writer, NOLA.com, 27 Aug. 2020
  • The willingness to be a political Don Quixote, while never common in Congress, now seems vanishingly rare.
    — Ron Elving, NPR, 18 May 2024
  • Such a candidate must always play Sancho Panza to someone else's Don Quixote, riding the burrow beside the questing knight.
    — Ron Elving, NPR, 30 Mar. 2024
  • Guy Montag burned libraries in Fahrenheit 451, and Don Quixote’s priest and barber burned the romances that turned the hidalgo mad.
    — Justin Beal, Curbed, 11 Sep. 2021
  • Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes’s 17th-century epic about a deluded knight, is frequently called the first modern novel.
    — Boris Kachka, The Atlantic, 3 July 2026
  • The iconic red-neon marquee remains, as do an array of intriguingly mediocre vintage paintings and a room-spanning brown-and-white mural of Don Quixote and his windmills.
    — Shauna Lyon, The New Yorker, 27 May 2022
  • Inspired by Don Quixote's surrealist whimsy, each act is performed by different dancers inhabiting the same characters.
    — Lilah Ramzi, Vogue, 14 June 2022
  • In fact, heat has been associated with physical and emotional endurance since the earliest modern novels—Don Quixote was very much toughing it out on his way to tilt at windmills.
    — Umair Irfan, WIRED, 20 July 2024
  • In fact, heat has been associated with physical and emotional endurance since the earliest modern novels — Don Quixote was very much toughing it out on his way to tilt at windmills.
    — Umair Irfan, Vox, 11 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Don Quixote.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: