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.

If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

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

An old man is twice a child, and so is a drunken man.

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

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

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

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

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.

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.

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

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.