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.
—Oliver Sacks, 2012Quotes
Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with ’em.
—William Wycherley, 1675A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk.
—Samuel Johnson, 1779The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971The drunken man is a living corpse.
—St. John Chrysostom, c. 390I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.
—Mitch Hedberg, 1999Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.
—William James, 1902Thanks be to God: since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.
—Samuel Pepys, 1662Modern life is often a mechanical oppression, and liquor is the only mechanical relief.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1935Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.
—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825There was a great deal of drinking among us but little drunkenness. We all seemed to feel that Prohibition was a personal affront and that we had a moral duty to undermine it.
—Elizabeth Anderson, 1969Abstainer, n. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906