Lapham’s Quarterly

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

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

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.

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

Whoever gulps down wine as a horse gulps down water is called a Scythian.

The drunken man is a living corpse.

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.

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

Under 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.

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.

Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Drink does not drown care but waters it, and makes it grow faster.

There 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.

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.

Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.

The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.

As he brews, so shall he drink.

A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.

An old man is twice a child, and so is a drunken man.

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.

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

Modern life is often a mechanical oppression, and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

That 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.

Moderation in all things.

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.

Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine mind and its efficacy to heal.

I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.

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

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living wisely, well, and justly, and impossible to live wisely, well, and justly without living pleasurably.

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

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

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

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

I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.