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.

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

The drunken man is a living corpse.

I 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.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

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

Life 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.

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

My 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.

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

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Drink does not drown care but waters it, and makes it grow faster.