The Kural or the Maxims of Tiruvalluvar/Chapter 93
CHAPTER 93
ABSTAINING FROM DRINK
921. Behold the men who are addicted to drink: they will never be feared by their enemies, and even the glory they have acquired they will lose.
922. Let none drink: but if they desire, let those men drink who care not for the esteem of worthy men.
923. The sight of the man who is intoxicated is an abomination even unto his own mother: what must it be then to the worthy ?
924. Behold the man who is addicted to the low vice of drunkenness: the fair one called Shame turneth her back upon him.
925. It is the veriest idiocy to spend one's substance and obtain in return only insensibility.
926. Behold the men who drink the poison called toddy day after day : they are as men that are asleep, neither do they differ from dead men.
927. Behold the men who drink in secret and pass their days in torpid insensibility : their neighbours will soon find them out, and hold them in utter contempt.
928. Let not the drunkard pretend, saying, I know not even what it is to be drunk : for thereby he would merely add falsehood to his other vice.
929. Behold the man who reproveth one who is intoxicated: he is like a man who searcheth torch in hand one who is immersed under water.
930. The man who seeth while he is sober the drunken state of another man, cannot he picture to himself his own state when he is drunk?
