Later, the high-flown values of chivalric romance were heavily satirized in Cervantes's Don Quixote, which portrayed the charmingly idealistic protagonist as a lovable but hopelessly delusional imbecile.

Imbecile.

You pathetic imbecile.

That imbecile!

He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession.

However innocent he might be, he could not be such an absolute imbecile as not to see that the circumstances were very black against him.

Well, I will tell you, I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about, um, what's the name of that imbecile who runs the country?

Look, you can't just call the fire department to save this imbecile, OK?

Why did you buy so many novelty teeth, you imbecile?

Oh, to love a woman, to be a priest, to be hated, to love with all the fury of one's soul, to feel that one would give for the least of her smiles one's blood, one's vitals, one's fame, one's salvation, one's immortality and eternity this life and the other to regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, God in order that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet to clasp her night and day in one's dreams and one's thoughts and to behold her in love with the trappings of a soldier and to have nothing to offer her but a priest's dirty casock which will inspire her with fear and disgust to be present with one's jealousy and one's rage while she lavishes on a miserable, blustering, imbecile treasures of love and beauty to behold that body whose form burns you that bosom which possesses so much sweetness that flesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of another oh, heaven, to love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to think of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one rise for whole nights together on the pavement of one's cell and to behold all those caresses which one has dreamed of end in torture to have succeeded only in stretching her upon the leather bed.