Thanks be to God: since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.

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

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

The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

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

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