121 As the wood of the doorframe shrinks in the cool of the night, with a sound of creaking and groaning, so too does a man toward the end of his days.

122 Do not blame the rope for hanging the man.

123 Even the hunter must perish.

124 Every man believes he thinks for himself and that his actions arise from within his own soul. But his words reveal him to be no more than a sheep, bleating what all the others in the same flock are bleating. Hence the need for a clear-eyed shepherd to guard against wolves.

125 The watcher also is watched, but the eye that watches him is in all places, at all times and does not blink.

126 They stand in the marketplace proffering paradise and punishment in equal measure. Children laugh at them and dogs bark and still the taverns remain full. But for them, as for the rest of us, the sun sets in the west, which is when they fall into the arms of sleep, with his dreams of apples and shadows and the twisting forms of naked bodies. Their sophistries then are useless in the same way that a harp is to a deaf man.