Read the Bible

¹ My son, attend to my wisdom, [and] bow thy ear to my understanding:² That thou mayest regard discretion, and [that] thy lips may keep knowledge.³ For the lips of a strange woman drop [as] a honey-comb, and her mouth [is] smoother than oil:⁴ But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.⁵ Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.⁶ Lest thou shouldst ponder the path of life, her ways are movable, [that] thou canst not know [them].⁷ Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.⁸ Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:⁹ Lest thou give thy honor to others, and thy years to the cruel:¹⁰ Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labors [be] in the house of a stranger;¹¹ And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,¹² And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;¹³ And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to them that instructed me!¹⁴ I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

¹⁵ Drink waters out of thy own cistern, and running waters out of thy own well.¹⁶ Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, [and] rivers of waters in the streets.¹⁷ Let them be only thy own, and not for strangers with thee.¹⁸ Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.¹⁹ [Let her be as] the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.²⁰ And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?²¹ For the ways of man [are] before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.²² His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sins.²³ He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.