Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
—Saint Augustine, 397Quotes
Sex and drugs and rock and roll.
—Ian Dury, 1977Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine mind and its efficacy to heal.
—Mary Baker Eddy, 1908Thanks 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, 1662Under 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, 1795My 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, 1966There 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, 1969Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.
—John Fletcher, 1625As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.
—Will Self, 1994That 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, 1569Drink does not drown care but waters it, and makes it grow faster.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1749I 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. 1798Modern life is often a mechanical oppression, and liquor is the only mechanical relief.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1935