They tell you not to drink, that otherwise you shall
become a prey to torment, and that in the day of
reckoning you will burn as fire. That may be, but the
day in which wine makes you joyous is more precious
than the goods of this world and those of the next.
If your own satisfaction consists in casting grief into a
heart free from all care, you could, friend, make mourning
with your wisdom during your whole life. Go, be
unhappy, then, for you are a person strangely ignorant.
Each time you can procure two mens of wine, drink
them, in every circumstance, in all society wherever you
may be; for he who does is freed from scornful looks
or gestures of disdain.
With a loaf of wheaten bread, two mens of wine and
meat in plenty, and seated in some desert spot with
some young beauty decked with cheeks tinted with the
tulip's blush, man hath a joy not given to any Sultan to
procure.
If in a city you acquire renown, you are thought to
be the most wicked of men; if you retire into a corner,
they regard you as a conspirator. What then is best,
were you Elias or Saint Jude, is to live in the way of
knowing none, and being known by none.