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

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

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.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

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

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

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

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.

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

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

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.

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

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.