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.

There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

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.

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.

I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.

That 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.

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.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

Under 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.

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

Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.