An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
form of writing raised to the highest level of expressive communication. Carl William Brown



60,000 QUOTES SPIDER
 


QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON ALCOHOL

 

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 (American editor, actor)

 

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

 

John Christian Bovee (1820-1904, American author, lawyer)

 

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

 

Lady Nancy Astor (1897-1964, British politician)

 

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 (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.

 

Roland Barthes (1915-1980, French semiologist)

 

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

 

Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

 

The whole world is about three drinks behind.

 

Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957, American film actor)

 

Never accept a drink from a Urologist.

 

Erma Bombeck (1927-, American author, humorist)

Author's website: www.humorwriters.org

 

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

 

Luis Bunuel (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.

 

Sir Richard Burton (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.

 

Samuel Butler (1612-1680, British poet, satirist)

 

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

 

Lord Byron (1788-1824, British poet)

 

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

 

Lord Byron (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.

 

Raymond Chandler (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.

 

Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936, British author)

 

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

 

Winston Churchill (1874-1965, British statesman, Prime Minister)

 

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

 

Winston Churchill (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.

 

Irvin S. Cobb

 

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

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (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!"

 

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947, British occultist)

 

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

 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870, British novelist)

 

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

 

Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936, American journalist, humorist)

 

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 (1914-1996, 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.

 

Marguerite Duras (1914-1996, French author, filmmaker)

 

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 (1914-1996, French author, filmmaker)

 

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

 

Epictetus (50-138, Phrygian philosopher)

 

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 (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)

 

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

 

George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

 

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

 

Henry Fielding (1707-1754, British novelist, dramatist)

 

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

 

W. C. Fields (1879-1946, American actor)

 

Somebody left the cork out of my lunch.

 

W. C. Fields (1879-1946, American actor)

 

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

 

W. C. Fields (1879-1946, American actor)

 

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

 

W. C. Fields (1879-1946, American actor)

 

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.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940, American writer)

Author's website: www.fitzgeraldsociety.org

 

The hangover became a part of the day as well allowed -- for as the Spanish siesta.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940, American writer)

Author's website: www.fitzgeraldsociety.org

 

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

 

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661, British clergyman, author)

 

Wine hath drowned more men than the sea.

 

Thomas Fuller (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.

 

John Gay (1688-1732, British playwright, poet)

 

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

 

Vance Havner

 

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

 

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

 

Ernest Hemingway (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.

 

Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961, American writer)

 

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

 

George Herbert (1593-1632, British metaphysical poet)

 

Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

 

A. E. Housman (1859-1936, British poet, classical scholar)

 

They who drink beer will think beer.

 

Washington Irving (1783-1859, American author)

 

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

 

William James (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.

 

William James (1842-1910, American psychologist, professor, author)

 

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

 

Samuel Johnson (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.

 

Samuel Johnson (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.

 

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, British author)

 

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

 

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, British author)

 

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others... This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

 

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, British author)

 

Those that merely talk and never think, that live in the wild anarchy of drink.

 

Ben Jonson (1573-1637, British dramatist, poet)

 

Even though a number of people have tried, no one has ever found a way to drink for a living.

 

Jean Kerr (1923-, American author, playwright)

 

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

 

Omar Khayyam (1048-1131, Persian astronomer, poet)

 

There is a devil in every berry of the grape.

 

The Koran (c. 500 AD, Islamic Religious Bible)

 

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

 

John Larroquette (1947-, American actor)

 

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

 

Robert E. Lee (1807-1870, American confederate army commander)

 

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 (1807-1870, American confederate army commander)

 

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

 

Joe E. Lewis (American writer)

 

I always wake up at the crack of ice.

 

Joe E. Lewis (American writer)

 

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

 

Joe E. Lewis (American writer)

 

I drink to forget I drink.

 

Joe E. Lewis (American writer)

 

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

 

Joe E. Lewis (American writer)

 

It pays to get drunk with the best people.

 

Joe E. Lewis (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.

 

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865, American President (16th))

 

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 (1917-1995, French-born American actor, singer)

 

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

 

Dean Martin (1917-1995, French-born American actor, singer)

 

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 (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.

 

John Milton (1608-1674, British poet)

 

I only drink to make other people seem more interesting.

 

George Jean Nathan (1882-1958, American critic)

 

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

 

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, German philosopher)

 

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

 

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, German philosopher)

 

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 (1633-1703, British diarist)

 

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

 

Titus Maccius Plautus (BC 254-184, Roman comic poet)

 

The best cure for drunkenness is to observe a drunken person when you are sober.

 

Chinese Proverb (Sayings of Chinese origin)

 

What is said when the drunk has been thought out beforehand.

 

Flemish Proverb

 

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

 

Irish Proverb (Sayings of Irish origin)

 

Old wine and friends improve with age.

 

Italian Proverb (Sayings of Italian origin)

 

First the man takes a drink of liquor, then the drink takes a drink, and then the drink takes the man.

 

Japanese Proverb (Sayings of Japanese origin)

 

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

 

Spanish Proverb (Sayings of Spanish origin)

 

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

 

Francois Rabelais (1495-1553, French satirist, physician, and humanist)

 

I do not live in the world of sobriety.

 

Oliver Reed

 

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

 

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970, British philosopher, mathematician, essayist)

 

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

 

L. Schefer

 

When the wine goes in, strange things come out.

 

Johann Friedrich Von Schiller (1759-1805, German dramatist, poet, historian)

 

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

 

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832, British novelist, poet)

 

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

 

John Selden (1584-1654, British jurist, statesman)

 

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

 

Marcus Annaeus Seneca (BC 3-65 AD, Roman philosopher, dramatist, statesman)

 

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 (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.

 

William Shakespeare (1564-1616, British poet, playwright, actor)

 

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

 

William Shakespeare (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!

 

William Shakespeare (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.

 

William Shakespeare (1564-1616, British poet, playwright, actor)

 

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

 

George Bernard Shaw (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!

 

Edward Rowland Sill

 

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

 

John Squire

 

No power on earth or above the bottomless pit has such influence to terrorise 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

 

Wine is bottled poetry.

 

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1895, Scottish essayist, poet, novelist)

 

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

 

Jonathan Swift (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.

 

Booth Tarkington (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.

 

Sir William Temple (1628-1699, British diplomat, essayist)

 

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

 

The Holy Bible (Sacred scriptures of Christians and Judaism)

 

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

 

Henry David Thoreau (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.

 

James Thurber (1894-1961, American humorist, illustrator)

 

Sometimes too much drink is barely enough.

 

Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)

 

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

 

Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)

 

Many a woman drives a man to drink… water.

 

Author Unknown

 

The piano has been drinking, not me.

 

Tom Waits (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.

 

Denzel Washington (1954-, American actor)

 

And must I wholly banish hence these red and golden juices, and pay my vows to Abstinence, that pallidest of Muses?

 

Sir William Watson (1858-1935, British poet)

 

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.

 

William Butler Yeats (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.

 

Frank Zappa (1940-, American rock musician)

 

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