25 Without eyes there is no light; without knowledge there is no wisdom. 26 A stubborn mind will fare badly at the end, and whoever loves danger will perish in it. 27 A stubborn mind will be burdened by troubles, and the sinner adds sin to sins. 28 When calamity befalls the proud, there is no healing, for an evil plant has taken root in him. 29 The mind of the intelligent appreciates proverbs, and an attentive ear is the desire of the wise.

For when he wondered that I, for whom he had no slight esteem, stuck so fast in the bird-lime of that pleasure as to affirm whenever we discussed the matter that it would be impossible for me to lead a single life, and urged in my defense when I saw him wonder that there was a vast difference between the life that he had tried by stealth and snatches (of which he had now but a faint recollection, and might therefore, without regret, easily despise), and my sustained acquaintance with it, whereto if but the honourable name of marriage were added, he would not then be astonished at my inability to contemn that course — then began he also to wish to be married, not as if overpowered by the lust of such pleasure, but from curiosity. For, as he said, he was anxious to know what that could be without which my life, which was so pleasing to him, seemed to me not life but a penalty. For his mind, free from that chain, was astounded at my slavery, and through that astonishment was going on to a desire of trying it, and from it to the trial itself, and thence, perchance, to fall into that bondage whereat he was so astonished, seeing he was ready to enter into a covenant with death; and he that loves danger shall fall into it.