Where one door shuts, another opens.
Quote
Where one door shuts, another opens.
Original text
Donde una puerta se cierra, otra se abre
The story behind this quote
The words open chapter XXI of the first part of Don Quixote, the chapter of the adventure of Mambrino’s helmet. The night of the fulling-mills has just passed, with its mysterious blows, which came from machines for fulling cloth, and with Sancho’s mockery. It begins to rain; Sancho would like to shelter in the mill, but Don Quixote will not so much as go near it. Then he sees a man on horseback with something on his head that glitters “as if it were of gold”, and declares to Sancho that there is no proverb that is not true, before quoting this one: if last night fortune shut a door on them, now it opens another wide.
What glitters is a barber’s brass basin, set on his hat to protect it from the rain. Don Quixote charges at him, the barber flees, and the knight keeps his “helmet”, which will give rise to much talk later on.
The proverb existed before Cervantes and is still used to console someone for a loss: when one possibility closes, another opens.
The source
Don Quixote, Part I, chapter XXI, 1605
Original text checked word for word in the work; the translation is by quotesay.
More quotes by Miguel de Cervantes
Author
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote (1605 and 1615), regarded as the first modern novel. A soldier wounded at Lepanto and a captive in Algiers for five years, he also wrote novellas and plays.
Quotes by Miguel de Cervantes