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
There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.
—Booth Tarkington, 1914Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
—Saint Augustine, 397My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.
—Timothy Leary, 1966Whoever gulps down wine as a horse gulps down water is called a Scythian.
—Athenaeus, c. 230Life 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.
—Thomas Hughes, 1857I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.
—Jack Kerouac, 1957That which the sober man keeps in his breast, the drunken man lets out at the lips. Astute people, when they want to ascertain a man’s true character, make him drunk.
—Martin Luther, 1569I am sure of this: that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now.
—Jane Austen, c. 1798Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal, 1981Under 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, 1795I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.
—Mitch Hedberg, 1999Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.
—John Fletcher, 1625