¹² Safer to meet a bear robbed of her cubs
    than fools in their folly.

⁹ Don’t speak in the ears of fools,
    for they will scorn your insightful words.

⁴ Don’t answer fools according to their folly,
    or you will become like them yourself.
⁵ Answer fools according to their folly,
    or they will deem themselves wise.
⁶ Sending messages with a fool
    is like cutting off one’s feet or drinking down violence.
⁷ As legs dangle from a disabled person,
    so does a proverb in the mouth of fools.
⁸ Like tying a stone in a sling,
    so is giving respect to a fool.
⁹ Like a thorny bush in the hand of a drunk,
    so is a proverb in the mouth of fools.
¹⁰ Like an archer who wounds someone randomly,
    so is one who hires a fool or a passerby.
¹¹ Like a dog that returns to its vomit,
    so a fool repeats foolish mistakes.

²² Even if you grind fools in a mortar,
    even grinding them along with the grain,
    their folly won’t be driven from them.

⁹ When the wise make a legal charge against the foolish,
    the fools shout, they laugh—there is no calm.