Having just been kept out of the library, the narrator observes university insiders and notes that they are protected by the institution
"It was amusing enough to watch the congregation assembling, coming in and going out again, busying themselves at the door of the Chapel like bees at the mouth of a hive. Many were in cap and gown; some had tufts of fur on their shoulders; others were wheeled in bath-chairs; others, though not past middle age, seemed creased and crushed into shapes so singular that one was reminded of those giant crabs and crayfish who heave with difficulty across the sand of an aquarium. As I leant against the wall the University indeed seemed a sanctuary in which are preserved rare types which would soon be obsolete if left to fight for existence on the pavement of the Strand.
Like me, Quixote seeks the same experiences he read about in literary romances (fully convinced these things will come to him), but encounters the real world: "The don's reward for these wish-chasing heroics is gruesome physical hurt. Crashing into the hard knocks of life, he gets chewed by lions, outmuscled by pilgrims, and thwacked by windmills, ending up bone bruised in ditch after ditch" (Fletcher 168).
The earthling, Arthur Dent, learns from the alien researcher, Ford Prefect, that the entry for "earth" in the digital encyclopedia of the cosmos notes only that it is "mostly harmless." Like me, Dent thought the earth was pretty important and worthy of more description.