"We should make few friends for the sake of pleasure, since but little sweetness suffices to season life, just as little salt suffices for our meat."
I found this quote/ analogy to be really beneficial as a way of making a point, but also interesting for what it might be extended to mean. I think this perfectly describes the previous sentence about a lack of mirth being better than too much merrymaking, since people would generally agree that plain food is more edible than way overly-salted food. But in either case, doing so once in a while is not going to kill you (nor will an occasional imbalance of mirth condemn a person). Perhaps more interestingly, this analogy made me wonder about the exceptions. For general eating, you may season meat lightly. But to preserve the meat due to certain seasons or circumstances, you might apply a lot of salt (like with jerky). Thus, how games would have been considered in very dark times like war, famine, disease, etc. On one hand, I could see a defense for perhaps even more merriment, given that these times would tax the soul further than usual and would thus need sufficient relaxation, as mentioned earlier by Aquinas' story of the tense bow. However, these times might also be deemed too inappropriate for games given the earlier mentioned possible objections of jokes being wrong for certain situations.