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

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living wisely, well, and justly, and impossible to live wisely, well, and justly without living pleasurably.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

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

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

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

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 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.

Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with ’em.

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

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

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

The drunken man is a living corpse.