As 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, 1994Quotes
Abstainer, n. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906The 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.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville, 1851A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832An old man is twice a child, and so is a drunken man.
—Plato, c. 360 BCDrink does not drown care but waters it, and makes it grow faster.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1749To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation.
—Oliver Sacks, 2012Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
—Saint Augustine, 397I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.
—Jack Kerouac, 1957Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.
—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.
—John Fletcher, 1625Under 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.
—Edmund Burke, 1795