Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra lost the use of his left hand at Lepanto, spent five years as a captive in Algiers, and worked as a tax collector before publishing the first part of Don Quixote in 1605 at fifty-seven. The second part followed in 1615, a year before his death. It is routinely called the first modern novel, and it is stuffed with proverbs — many of which, like this one, escaped the book and became sayings in their own right.