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.

Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with ’em.

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

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

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.

The drunken man is a living corpse.

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

Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.

Thanks 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.

Modern life is often a mechanical oppression, and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.

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.

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