Put all Hope out of your mind.

And masturbate as little as possible. It drains the strength.

With that little bit of wisdom from Papillon, I'd like to move on to sharing a little classical wisdom from Hesiod on things related to this blog.

First his somewhat erotic description of the muses:

Their soft feet move in the dance that rings

The violet-dark spring and the altar of Zeus.

They bathe their lithe bodies in the water of Permessos

Or of Hippokrene or of god-haunted Olmeios.

Which seems to promise that their lithe bodies could be coming to some water near you, although they have been gone from me for some time. Hesiod also tells us of Venus:

From her come young girls' whispers and smiles and deception

And honey-sweet love and its joyful pleasures.

And on marriage:

The right time to bring a wife to your home

Is when you are only a few years younger than thirty,

or just a few years older. This is the right time for marriage.

Five years past puberty makes a woman a suitable bride.

Marry a virgin so you can teach her right from wrong.

Choose from among the girls who live near you and check

Every detail, so that your wife will not be the neighborhood joke.

Nothing is better for man than a good wife.

Miscellaneous advice:

It is not good for boys twelve days or twelve years old

To sit on that which is motionless,

For such an act unmans even a man in his prime.

A man should not sleek his body with a woman's bath water,

For in time even this is cruelly punished.

Do not piss as you stand and face the sun,

but do it after the sun sets and before it rises.

Sire your children when you return from a feast of the gods.

In your house do not sit by the hearth

With your genitals exposed and bespattered with semen.

Ah, advice as bronze as the day it was printed. And something we can all agree on.