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

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

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.

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

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

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

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

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.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

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

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

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