Quotes about alcohol-and-alcoholism

If all be true that I do think, there are five reasons we should drink: Good wine -- a friend -- or being dry -- or lest we should be by and by -- or any other reason why.

— Henry Aldrich

One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.

— Lady Nancy Astor

An alcoholic has been lightly defined as a man who drinks more than his own doctor.

— Alvan L. Barach

The best audience is one that is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk.

— Alben W. Barkley

Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philter, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.

— Roland Barthes

One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.

— Brendan F. Behan

Wine is a mocker, and strong drink is raging; and who is deceived by it is not wise.

— Bible

The whole world is about three drinks behind.

— Humphrey Bogart

Never accept a drink from a Urologist.

— Erma Bombeck

Wine is a treacherous friend who you must always be on guard for.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.

— Luis Bunuel

When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was drunk.

— Sir Richard Burton

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

— Samuel Butler

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter. Sermons and soda water the day after.

— Lord Byron

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.

— Lord Byron

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.

— Raymond Chandler

Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

— Winston Churchill

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

— Winston Churchill

A sudden violent jolt of it has been known to stop the victim's watch, snap his suspenders and crack his glass eye right across.

— Irvin S. Cobb

Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There is only one really safe, mild, harmless beverage and you can drink as much of that as you like without running the slightest risk, and what you say when you want it is, Garcon! Un Pernod!

— Aleister Crowley

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

— Charles Dickens

Alcohol is necessary for a man so that he can have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed be the facts.

— Finley Peter Dunne

No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.

— Marguerite Duras

Alcohol is barren. The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.

— Marguerite Duras

Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.

— Marguerite Duras

When a woman drinks it's as if an animal were drinking, or a child. Alcoholism is scandalous in a woman, and a female alcoholic is rare, a serious matter. It's a slur on the divine in our nature.

— Marguerite Duras

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.

— Epictetus

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.

— George Farquhar

Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.

— Henry Fielding

I never drink water. I'm afraid it will become habit-forming.

— W. C. Fields

I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.

— W. C. Fields

You can't trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.

— W. C. Fields

It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.

— W. C. Fields

The cost of living has gone up another dollar a quart.

— W. C. Fields

Somebody left the cork out of my lunch.

— W. C. Fields

A drinker has a hole under his nose that all his money runs into.

— Thomas Fuller

Wine hath drowned more men than the sea.

— Thomas Fuller

Fill it up. I take as large draughts of liquor as I did of love. I hate a flincher in either.

— John Gay

I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.

— Oliver Goldsmith

I'm tired of hearing sin called sickness and alcoholism a disease. It is the only disease I know of that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread.

— Vance Havner

I'm tied of hearing about temperance instead of abstinence, in order to please the cocktail crowd in church congregations.

— Vance Havner

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

— Ernest Hemingway

Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does? The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

— Ernest Hemingway

Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame, when once it is within thee.

— George Herbert

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.

— A. E. Housman

They who drink beer will think beer.

— Washington Irving

If merely feeling good could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

— William James

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.

— William James

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

— Samuel Johnson

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

— Samuel Johnson

There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.

— Samuel Johnson

Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

— Omar Khayyam

There is a devil in every berry of the grape.

— The Koran

A few years back I was more a candidate for skid row bum than an Emmy. If I hadn't stopped [drinking], I'd be playing handball with John Belushi right now.

— John Larroquette

My experience through life has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safeguard of morals and health.

— Robert E. Lee

I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it.

— Robert E. Lee

I always wake up at the crack of ice.

— Joe E. Lewis

I don't drink any more than the man next to me, and the man next to me is Dean Martin.

— Joe E. Lewis

A man is never drunk if he can lay on the floor without holding on.

— Joe E. Lewis

I drink to forget I drink.

— Joe E. Lewis

I would take a bomb, but I can't stand the noise.

— Joe E. Lewis

It pays to get drunk with the best people.

— Joe E. Lewis

I'd hate to be a teetotaler. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that's as good as you're going to feel all day.

— Dean Martin

If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt.

— Dean Martin

Prohibition may be a disputed theory, but none can say that it doesn't hold water.

— Thomas L. Masson

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

— H. L. Mencken

And when night, darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

— John Milton

I only drink to make other people seem more interesting.

— George Jean Nathan

The Great Spirit, who made all things, made every thing for some use, and whatever use he designed anything for, that use it should always be put to. Now, when he made rum, he said Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with, and it must be so.

— Native American Elder

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Where does one not find that bland degeneration which beer produces in the spirit!

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A torchlight procession marching down your throat.

— John Louis O'Sullivan

Thanks be to God. Since my leaving the 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.

— Samuel Pepys

This is the great fault of wine; it first trips up the feet: it is a cunning wrestler.

— Titus Maccius Plautus

What whiskey will not cure, there is no cure for.

— Irish Proverb

Old wine and friends improve with age.

— Italian Proverb

Under a tattered cloak you will generally find a good drinker.

— Spanish Proverb

When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.

— Francois Rabelais

I do not live in the world of sobriety.

— Oliver Reed

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

— Bertrand Russell

They make much of our drinking, but never think of our thirst.

— L. Schefer

Of all vices, drinking is the most incompatible with greatness.

— Sir Walter Scott

It's not the drinking to be blamed, but the excess.

— John Selden

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

— Seneca

If I remember right there are five excuses for drinking: the visit of a guest, present thirst, future thirst, the goodness of the wine, and any other excuse you choose!

— Pete Sermond

I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking; so full of valor that they smote the air, for breathing in their faces, beat the ground for kissing of their feet.

— William Shakespeare

Macduff: What three things does drink especially provoke? Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.

— William Shakespeare

O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause transform ourselves into beasts!

— William Shakespeare

I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.

— George Bernard Shaw

At the punch-bowl's brink, let the thirsty think, what they say in Japan: first the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man!

— Edward Rowland Sill

I'm not so think as you drunk I am.

— John Squire

Wine is bottled poetry.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

No power on earth or above the bottomless pit has such influence to terrorize and make cowards of men as the liquor power. Satan could not have fallen on a more potent instrument with which to thrall the world. Alcohol is king!

— Eliza ''Mother'' Stewart

There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.

— Booth Tarkington

The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies.

— Sir William Temple

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

— Henry David Thoreau

It takes that je ne sais quoi which we call sophistication for a woman to be magnificent in a drawing-room when her faculties have departed but she herself has not yet gone home.

— James Thurber