I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

People who’ve drunk neat wine don’t care a damn.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.

There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.

Whoever gulps down wine as a horse gulps down water is called a Scythian.

If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation.

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations—wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.