Archive

Quotes

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

—Herman Melville, 1851

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.

—Jane Austen, c. 1798

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

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

—Samuel Johnson, 1779

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

—Benjamin Franklin, 1749

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

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.

—Edmund Burke, 1795

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

—Ian Dury, 1977

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.

—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825

Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine mind and its efficacy to heal.

—Mary Baker Eddy, 1908

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

—Plato, c. 360 BC