People who’ve drunk neat wine don’t care a damn.
—Hipponax, c. 550 BCQuotes
Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
—Jerome K. Jerome, 1889That 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.
—Martin Luther, 1569Drink does not drown care but waters it, and makes it grow faster.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1749As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.
—Will Self, 1994The drunken man is a living corpse.
—St. John Chrysostom, c. 390Sex and drugs and rock and roll.
—Ian Dury, 1977I 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. 1798There 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, 1969Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville, 1851As he brews, so shall he drink.
—Ben Jonson, 1598Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with ’em.
—William Wycherley, 1675There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.
—Booth Tarkington, 1914