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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Aldrich, Henry
American Editor Actor
One reason I don’t drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Astor, Lady Nancy
1897-1964 British Politician
An alcoholic has been lightly defined as a man who drinks more than his own doctor.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Barach, Alvan L.
The best audience is one that is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Barkley, Alben W.
1877-1956 American Politician
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Barthes, Roland
1915-1980 French Semiologist
One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Behan, Brendan F.
1923-1964 Irish Writer
Wine is a mocker, and strong drink is raging; and who is deceived by it is not wise.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Bible
Sacred Scriptures of Christians and Judaism
The whole world is about three drinks behind.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Bogart, Humphrey
1899-1957 American Film Actor
Never accept a drink from a Urologist.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Bombeck, Erma
1927 American Author Humorist
Wine is a treacherous friend who you must always be on guard for.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Bovee, Christian Nevell
1820-1904 American Author Lawyer
The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Bunuel, Luis
1900-1983 Spanish Film Director
When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn’t know how to play them when I was drunk.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Burton, Sir Richard
1821-1890 Explorer Born in Torquay
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Butler, Samuel
1612-1680 British Poet Satirist
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter. Sermons and soda water the day after.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Byron, Lord
1788-1824 British Poet
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Byron, Lord
1788-1824 British Poet
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Chandler, Raymond
1888-1959 American Author
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
1874-1936 British Author
I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Churchill, Winston
1874-1965 British Statesman Prime Minister
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Churchill, Winston
1874-1965 British Statesman Prime Minister
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Cobb, Irvin S.
Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
1772-1834 British Poet Critic Philosopher
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!
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Crowley, Aleister
1875-1947 British Occultist
Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Dickens, Charles
1812-1870 British Novelist
Alcohol is necessary for a man so that he can have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed be the facts.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Dunne, Finley Peter
1867-1936 American Journalist Humorist
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Duras, Marguerite
1914 French Author Filmmaker
Alcohol is barren. The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Duras, Marguerite
1914 French Author Filmmaker
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Duras, Marguerite
1914 French Author Filmmaker
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Duras, Marguerite
1914 French Author Filmmaker
There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Epictetus
50-120 Stoic Philosopher
I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Farquhar, George
c1677-1707 Irish Playwright
Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fielding, Henry
1707-1754 British Novelist Dramatist
I never drink water. I’m afraid it will become habit-forming.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fields, W. C.
1879-1946 American Actor
I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fields, W. C.
1879-1946 American Actor
You can’t trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fields, W. C.
1879-1946 American Actor
It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fields, W. C.
1879-1946 American Actor
The cost of living has gone up another dollar a quart.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fields, W. C.
1879-1946 American Actor
Somebody left the cork out of my lunch.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fields, W. C.
1879-1946 American Actor
A drinker has a hole under his nose that all his money runs into.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fuller, Thomas
1608-1661 British Clergyman Author
Wine hath drowned more men than the sea.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Fuller, Thomas
1608-1661 British Clergyman Author
Fill it up. I take as large draughts of liquor as I did of love. I hate a flincher in either.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Gay, John
1688-1732 British Playwright Poet
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Goldsmith, Oliver
1728-1774 Anglo-Irish Author Poet Playwright
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Havner, Vance
I’m tied of hearing about temperance instead of abstinence, in order to please the cocktail crowd in church congregations.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Havner, Vance
Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Hemingway, Ernest
1898-1961 American Writer
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Hemingway, Ernest
1898-1961 American Writer
Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame, when once it is within thee.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Herbert, George
1593-1632 British Metaphysical Poet
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Housman, A. E.
1859-1936 British Poet Classical Scholar
Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Housman, A. E.
1859-1936 British Poet Classical Scholar
They who drink beer will think beer.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Irving, Washington
1783-1859 American Author
If merely feeling good could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
James, William
1842-1910 American Psychologist Professor Author
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
James, William
1842-1910 American Psychologist Professor Author
A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
Even though a number of people have tried, no one has ever found a way to drink for a living.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Kerr, Jean
1923 American Author Playwright
Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Khayyam, Omar
1048-1131 Persian Astronomer Poet
There is a devil in every berry of the grape.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Koran, The
c 500 AD Islamic Religious Bible
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Larroquette, John
1947 American Actor
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lee, Robert E.
1807-1870 American Confederate Army Commander
I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lee, Robert E.
1807-1870 American Confederate Army Commander
I always wake up at the crack of ice.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lewis, Joe E.
American Writer
I don’t drink any more than the man next to me, and the man next to me is Dean Martin.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lewis, Joe E.
American Writer
A man is never drunk if he can lay on the floor without holding on.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lewis, Joe E.
American Writer
I drink to forget I drink.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lewis, Joe E.
American Writer
I would take a bomb, but I can’t stand the noise.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lewis, Joe E.
American Writer
It pays to get drunk with the best people.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lewis, Joe E.
American Writer
I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Lincoln, Abraham
1809-1865 Sixteenth President of the USA
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Martin, Dean
1917-1995 French-born American-born American Actor Singer Lush
If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Martin, Dean
1917-1995 French-born American-born American Actor Singer Lush
Prohibition may be a disputed theory, but none can say that it doesn’t hold water.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Masson, Thomas L.
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn’t care to drink with, even if he drank.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
And when night, darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Milton, John
1608-1674 British Poet
Candy, is dandy, but Liquor, is quicker.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Nash, Ogden
1902-1971 American Humorous Poet
I only drink to make other people seem more interesting.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Nathan, George Jean
1882-1958 American Critic
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Native American Elder
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1844-1900 German Philosopher
Where does one not find that bland degeneration which beer produces in the spirit!
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1844-1900 German Philosopher
A torchlight procession marching down your throat.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
O’Sullivan, John Louis
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Pepys, Samuel
1633-1703 British Diarist
This is the great fault of wine; it first trips up the feet: it is a cunning wrestler.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Plautus, Titus Maccius
BC 254-184 Roman Comic Poet
What whiskey will not cure, there is no cure for.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Proverb, Irish
Sayings of Irish Origin
Old wine and friends improve with age.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Proverb, Italian
Sayings of Italian Origin
Under a tattered cloak you will generally find a good drinker.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Proverb, Spanish
Sayings of Spanish Origin
When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Rabelais, Francois
1495-1553 French Satirist Physician and Humanist
I do not live in the world of sobriety.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Reed, Oliver
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Russell, Bertrand
1872-1970 British Philosopher Mathematician Essayist
They make much of our drinking, but never think of our thirst.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Schefer, L.
Of all vices, drinking is the most incompatible with greatness.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Scott, Sir Walter
1771-1832 British Novelist Poet
It’s not the drinking to be blamed, but the excess.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Selden, John
1584-1654 British Jurist Statesman
Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Seneca
4 BC � 65 AD Spanish-born Roman Statesman philosopher
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!
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Sermond, Pete
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor
Macduff: What three things does drink especially provoke? Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor
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!
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor
O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor
It provokes the desire but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor
I’m only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Shaw, George Bernard
1856-1950 Irish-born British Dramatist
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!
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Sill, Edward Rowland
I’m not so think as you drunk I am.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Squire, John
Wine is bottled poetry.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Stevenson, Robert Louis
1850-1895 Scottish Essayist Poet Novelist
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!
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Stewart, Eliza ”Mother”
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Swift, Jonathan
1667-1745 Anglo-Irish Satirist
There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Tarkington, Booth
1869-1946 American Writer
The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Temple, Sir William
1628-1699 British Diplomat Essayist
Water is the only drink for a wise man.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Thoreau, Henry David
1817-1862 American Essayist Poet Naturalist
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.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Thurber, James
1894-1961 American Humorist Illustrator
Sometimes too much drink is barely enough.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Twain, Mark
1835-1910 American Humorist Writer
Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Twain, Mark
1835-1910 American Humorist Writer
It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Unknown, Source
Many a woman drives a man to drink water.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Unknown, Source
The hangover became a part of the day as well allowed-for as the Spanish siesta.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Unknown, Source
Beauty is in the eye of the Beer holder!
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Unknown, Source
I drink to make other people interesting.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Unknown, Source
The piano has been drinking, not me.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Waits, Tom
1949 American Musician Singer Songwriter Composer Actor
I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me-spiritually and financially.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Washington, Denzel
1954 American Actor
And must I wholly banish hence these red and golden juices, and pay my vows to Abstinence, that pallidest of Muses?
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Watson, Sir William
1858-1935 British Poet
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Yeats, William Butler
1865-1939 Irish Poet Playwright
You can’t be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline — it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Zappa, Frank
1940 American Rock Musician