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.

If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

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

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

As he brews, so shall he drink.

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.

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.

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.

The drunken man is a living corpse.

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

People who’ve drunk neat wine don’t care a damn.

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

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.