"Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.................Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."
"Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks call entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament - the transmutation of water into wine at the wedding at Cana - is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point to defy the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human."
Christopher Hitchens
One thing I love about quoting greater minds than my own (of which there are untold billions), is learning from them.
I now know that sodality means brotherhood or community.
Wonder if I can slip that into conversation at The Asylum today?
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