Those who, through knowledge, are the cream of the
world; who, with intelligence scan the heights of the
heavens, they also, like the firmament, have their heads
turned in their search for divine knowledge, and are
taken with vertigo and dimness of sight.
God has promised us wine in Paradise. In that case
why should He prohibit it in this world? One day an
Arab in a state of drunkenness cut the hams of Hamzah's
camel with his sword. It is only for him that our
Prophet makes wine illicit.
Since at this moment there only remains to you the
memory of pleasure passed away; since for a perfect friend
you have only a cup of wine; finally, since that is all you
own, rejoice at least in this possession and let the cup
not slip from your hands.
Oh! for the time when we shall be no more and the
world shall still be here! There will remain no fame or
trace of us. The world was not unfinished when we
came; naught will be changed when we have gone
from it.
Those whose feet have trodden the world, who have
run over it for the sake of appropriating the riches of
the two hemispheres to themselves, they are not the
ones, I believe, who have ever been able to explain the
true state, the real situation of things here below.