And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye.

Truly, he thought, the way of enlightenment is like unto half a mile of broken glass.

It’s quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it.

An ancient proverb summed it up when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.