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Who really said it

Patience, and shuffle the cards

Written by Miguel de Cervantes 1547–1616 · Spanish novelist, poet and playwright
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Cervantes wrote it in Don Quixote, Part II (1615), chapter 23. In Spanish it is three words — “paciencia y barajar” — and it is not Don Quixote or Sancho who says it, but Durandarte, an enchanted knight lying on a marble tomb inside the Cave of Montesinos, in a vision Cervantes goes out of his way to call apocryphal. The familiar English wording is Tobias Smollett’s (1755) and Pierre Antoine Motteux’s (1701).

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“Patience, and shuffle the cards” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II (1615), ch. 23 — spoken by Durandarte in the Cave of Montesinos; "paciencia y barajar", in Tobias Smollett’s 1755 translation. quotle.info/who-said/patience-and-shuffle-the-cards/

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Provenance

The source

Work
Don Quixote, Part II
Location
Chapter 23 — the Cave of Montesinos
Spoken by
Durandarte, an enchanted knight — a character within Don Quixote’s vision
Spanish original
“…digo, paciencia y barajar”
Translation quoted
Tobias Smollett, 1755

“And if that should not be the case,” replied the afflicted Durandarte, in a faint and languid tone; “and if that should not be the case, cousin, I say, patience, and shuffle the cards.” Then turning himself upon one side, he relapsed into his usual silence, without speaking another word. Smollett, 1755

Translators split on the last three words. Smollett (1755) and Motteux (1701) both give “patience, and shuffle the cards”; John Ormsby (1885) keeps it tight as “patience and shuffle”. The Spanish barajar means to shuffle — the cards are supplied by the English.

Smollett’s translation at Project Gutenberg

How we verified this

Public domain

Free to use. The Spanish original was published in 1615, and every English translation quoted here is long out of copyright in the United States: Motteux 1701, Smollett 1755, Ormsby 1885 — all well before the 1931 cut-off, and all available in full at Project Gutenberg.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Context

Why it mattered

The Cave of Montesinos is the strangest episode in the book. Don Quixote is lowered into a pit on a rope, hauled out a little better than an hour later, by Sancho’s reckoning, and reports having spent three days underground among enchanted knights. Cervantes titles the chapter to say the adventure should be “deemed apocryphal” — he is telling you not to believe his own hero.

Durandarte, whose heart was famously carried to the lady Belerma after his death at Roncesvalles, is lying on his tomb waiting for the enchantment to lift. Told that Don Quixote may be the one to break it, he answers, in effect: and if not, deal again.

Then turning himself upon one side, he relapsed into his usual silence.

Read the full story

Cervantes then makes a joke of the line. A scholar travelling with Don Quixote seizes on it as evidence for the book he is writing, a supplement to Polydore Vergil on the invention of antiquities: since Durandarte died in the time of Charlemagne and could not have learned the phrase while enchanted, playing cards must be that old.

It is a small piece of comic pedantry — a man deducing the history of card games from a ghost’s figure of speech — and it is why the line gets said twice: once by Durandarte in chapter 23, and again by the cousin in the chapter that follows. Being said twice is part of why it stuck.

What survives in circulation is the proverb stripped of all of it: no cave, no enchanted knight, no joke. Just three words of Spanish patience, wearing an English deck of cards the original never mentions.

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More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Don Quixote (Smollett, 1755)gutenberg.org

The public-domain translation carrying the exact popular wording, twice, in the Montesinos chapter.
Don Quixote (Motteux)gutenberg.org

A second independent translation with the identical English at the same point.
Don Quixote (Ormsby, 1885)gutenberg.org

Renders it "patience and shuffle" — the shortest English form — and gives the chapter number.
Don Quijote (Spanish)gutenberg.org

The Spanish text: "paciencia y barajar", in Durandarte’s speech.
Miguel de Cervantesen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line under Part II (1615), Ch. 23.
Cueva de Montesinosen.wikipedia.org

The real cave in the province of Albacete that Cervantes sent his hero down.

The author

About Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes

1547–1616 · Spanish novelist, poet and playwright

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.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote, Part II, ch. 23. Translated by Tobias Smollett, 1755. Project Gutenberg ebook 77095.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Patience, and shuffle the cards’?” Last verified 18 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/patience-and-shuffle-the-cards/

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