Proverbs 23 — Douay-Rheims Bible

When thou shalt sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before thy face:● And put a knife to thy throat, if it be so that thou have thy soul in thy own power.● Be not desirous of his meats, in which is the bread of deceit.● Labour not to be rich: but set bounds to thy prudence.● Lift not up thy eyes to riches which thou canst not have: because they shall make themselves wings like those of an eagle, and shall fly towards heaven.● Eat not with an envious man, and desire not his meats:● Because, like a soothsayer, and diviner, he thinketh that which he knoweth not. Eat and drink, will he say to thee: and his mind is not with thee.● The meats which thou hadst eaten, thou shalt vomit up: and shalt loose thy beautiful words.● Speak not in the ears of fools: because they will despise the instruction of thy speech.● Touch not the bounds of little ones: and enter not into the field of the fatherless:● For their near kinsman is strong: and he will judge their cause against thee.● Let thy heart apply itself to instruction and thy ears to words of knowledge.● Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die.● Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.● My son, if thy mind be wise, my heart shall rejoice with thee:● And my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips shall speak what is right.● Let not thy heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long:● Because thou shalt have hope in the latter end, and thy expectation shall not be taken away.● Hear thou, my son, and be wise: and guide thy mind in the way.● Be not in the feasts of great drinkers, nor in their revellings, who contribute flesh to eat:● Because they that give themselves to drinking, and that club together, shall be consumed: and drowsiness shall be clothed with rags.● Hearken to thy father, that begot thee: and despise not thy mother when she is old.● Buy truth, and do not sell wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.● The father of the just rejoiceth greatly: he that hath begotten a wise son, shall have joy in him.● Let thy father and thy mother be joyful, and let her rejoice that bore thee.● My son, give me thy heart: and let thy eyes keep my ways.● For a harlot is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow pit.● She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and him whom she shall see unwary, she will kill.● Who hath woe? whose father hath woe? who hath contentions? who falls into pits? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?● Surely they that pass their time in wine, and study to drink off their cups.● Look not upon the wine when it is yellow, when the colour thereof shineth in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly,● But in the end, it will bite like a snake, and will spread abroad poison like a basilisk.● Thy eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart shall utter perverse things.● And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep when the stern is lost.● And thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I was not sensible of pain: they drew me, and I felt not: when shall I awake and find wine again?●