El beber desata la lengua (in virtus disertus). Pero también franquea el corazón y es el vehículo material de una cualidad moral, a saber, la franqueza. La reserva en los propios pensamientos es para un corazón puro un estado opresivo, y unos bebedores jocundos no toleran fácilmente que nadie sea en medio de la francachela muy moderado; porque representa un observador que atiende a las faltas de los demás, pero reserva las suyas propias. También dice Hume: ‘Es desagradable el compañero de diversión que no olvida; las locuras de un día deben ser olvidadas para hacer lugar a las del otro’.

El vino y la cerveza, de los cuales el primero es meramente excitante, la segunda más nutritiva y parecida al alimento, provocan la embriaguez sociable; hay, empero, la diferencia de que las orgías de cerveza son más soñadoramente herméticas, frecuentemente también groseras, mientras que las de vino son alegres, ruidosas y de chistosa locuacidad.

Antístenes murió de enfermedad. Durante ésta Diógenes se le acercó un día y le dijo: ‘¿No tienes necesidad de un amigo?’. Entró llevando un puñal consigo y al hallarse diciendo aquél: ‘¿Quién me liberará de mis sufrimientos?’, señalándole el puñal, le dijo: ‘Éste’. Y aquél le respondió: ‘¡De los sufrimientos, dije, no de la vida!’. Porque en cierto modo parecía soportar bastante blandamente la enfermedad por apego a la vida.

Dicen que Antístenes amaba a un chico, pero que unos, que querían seducirlo mediante un convite, le ofrecieron unos platos de pescado y otros, entonces, le dijeron a Antístenes: ‘En este mismo momento tus rivales te superan en la estimación de él’. Y él respondió: ‘Desde luego que sí, puesto que yo no gobierno el mar. Si, pues, él se merece pedir esos alimentos, yo merezco mantenerme alejado de los que son de esa índole. Porque si mañana algún otro le ofreciera platos de pescado, ¿no se volvería a ir también con ése?’.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us -a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the weong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not the question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On an halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

O dark dark dark. They all go into dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away-
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And yo see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing-
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lighting.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive to what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.