Deep Water in the Heart

Wine makes you mean, beer makes you quarrelsome— a staggering drunk is not much fun.

15

Oh listen, dear child—become wise; point your life in the right direction. Don’t drink too much wine and get drunk; don’t eat too much food and get fat. Drunks and gluttons will end up on skid row, in a stupor and dressed in rags.

18

Who are the people who are always crying the blues? Who do you know who reeks of self-pity? Who keeps getting beaten up for no reason at all? Whose eyes are bleary and bloodshot? It’s those who spend the night with a bottle, for whom drinking is serious business. Don’t judge wine by its label, or its bouquet, or its full-bodied flavor. Judge it rather by the hangover it leaves you with— the splitting headache, the queasy stomach. Do you really prefer seeing double, with your speech all slurred, Reeling and seasick, drunk as a sailor? “They hit me,” you’ll say, “but it didn’t hurt; they beat on me, but I didn’t feel a thing. When I’m sober enough to manage it, bring me another drink!”

To ask a moron to quote a proverb is like putting a scalpel in the hands of a drunk.

Hire a fool or a drunk and you shoot yourself in the foot.