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It is indeed true that many faults accompany those kings who attach themselves to these sources of ruin; they should therefore avoid them.

The wise have said that the drinking of intoxicating liquors ranks highest amongst all those things that cause destruction: the drinking of spirituous liquor tends to the loss of property, wisdom, strength, prosperity, reputation, and dignity.

By indulgence in spirits great wisdom is destroyed; one cannot understand the truth nor know the vitality of another; he cannot discriminate between harmful and unharmful food.

A drunkard looks upon his mother as his wife, and his wife as his mother, his house as a pit or the like, and a small thing as a thing of great consequence.

He looks upon a small piece of water like the ocean, and the ocean as if dry land; he considers the king as his friend.

A drunkard diminishes his present property, engages in quarrel, contracts disease, destroys his good reputation, loses all sense of shame, and becomes weak in wisdom.

Corrupt people are devoid of purity of behaviour; they discard their relatives as dead; they are without anxiety, and dead to a sense of shame; with great difficulty do they obtain the necessaries of life.