Archive

Quotes

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

—Gore Vidal, 1981

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

—Athenaeus, c. 230

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

—Plato, c. 360 BC

Drunkenness is the very sepulcher / Of man’s wit and his discretion.

—Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1390

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

—William James, 1902

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.

—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825

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.

—Elizabeth Anderson, 1969

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.

—Walt Whitman, 1842

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

—Ian Dury, 1977

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.

—Thomas Hughes, 1857

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

—Samuel Johnson, 1779

People who’ve drunk neat wine don’t care a damn.

—Hipponax, c. 550 BC

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, 2012