Archive

Quotes

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, 2012

The drunken man is a living corpse.

—St. John Chrysostom, c. 390

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk.

—Samuel Johnson, 1779

Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.

—John Fletcher, 1625

There 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, 1969

The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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.

—Edmund Burke, 1795

Abstainer, n. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

—Saint Augustine, 397

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

—Herman Melville, 1851

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

—Athenaeus, c. 230

The 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, 1971

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

—Jack Kerouac, 1957