QUISBY QUOTES

Acilius:
The wine-cup is glad! Dear Zenophile's lip
It boasts to have touched when she stooped down to sip.
Happy wine-cup! I wish that, with lips joined to mine,
All my soul at a draught she would drink up like wine.

Samuel Adams:
It is to be hoped, that the Gentlemen of the Town will endeavor to bring our own OCTOBER BEER into Fashion again, by that most prevailing Motive, EXAMPLE, so that we may no longer be beholden to "foreigners" for a "Credible Liquor," which may be as successfully manufactured in this country.

Let no man thirst for good beer.

Scott Adams:
When I think of all the people I respect the most, you're right there, serving them drinks.

George Ade:
R-e-m-o-r-s-e,
Those dry Martinis were too much for me.
Last night I really felt immense,
To-day I feel like thirty cents;
It is no time for mirth and laughter
In the cold gray dawn of the morning after.

Joseph Addison:
An honest man, that is not quite sober, has nothing to fear.

Aeschylus:
Bronze is the mirror of the form; wine, of the heart.

Alcaeus:
To be bowed by grief is folly;
Naught is gained by melancholy;
Better than the pain of thinking,
Is to steep the sense in drinking.

One that has wine as a chain about his wit, such a one lives no life at all.

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

Alexis of Thurii:
In wine and man this difference appears:
The old man bores you, but the wine cheers.
Men do not, like your wine, improve by age;
The more their years, the less their ways engage.

Henry Warner Allen:
The wines that one remembers best are not necessarily the finest that one has tasted, and the highest quality may fail to delight so much as some far more humble beverage drunk in more favorable surroundings.

Religions change; beer and wine remain.

Steve Allen:
Do not allow children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth.

Woody Allen:
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.

Anacharsis:
The first draught serveth for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, and the fourth for madness.

The vine bears three kinds of grapes: the first of pleasure, the next of intoxication, and the third of disgust.

Poul Anderson:
Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk.

Aldebaran is not so red within the Hyades
As is the hearthside claret heartward flowing;
No gold or whiteness quivers across the winter seas
Like that which gleams where chardonnay is glowing.
Drink, before our time shall come for going. Once again the vintners have wrought their humble miracle.

Antiphanes:
Two things only a man cannot hide: that he is drunk and that he is in love.

Aristophanes:
When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.

Eleanor Arnason:
This is not a situation which can be handled with beer. This calls for wine. Or maybe brandy. Saint Arnold of Metz:
From man's sweat and God's love, beer came into the world.

George Arnold:
I,
Being dry,
Sit, idly sipping here,
My beer.

Dave Astor:
Alcohol is good for you. My grandfather proved it irrevocably. He drank two quarts of booze every mature day of his life and lived to the age of 103. I was at the cremation - that fire would not go out.

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

Brooks Atkinson:
The cocktail party has the form of friendship without the warmth and devotion. It is the device for getting rid of social obligations hurriedly en masse, or for making overtures toward more serious social relationships, as in the etiquette of whoring.

Jane Austen:
I am sure of this, that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would be not half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all.

Felix Aymer:
Alcohol in the middle of the day is exciting when you're thirty, but disastrous at seventy. Riocard Bairéad:
People have discovered many ways of gathering money and amassing wealth, little thinking that their life will end and that they will soon be laid in the grave. Whether you're a landlord, a duke or a king, not a penny will accompany you under the sod, and so, there's no better employment than the enjoyment of life with plenty to drink.

Mikhail Bakunin:
People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.

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

Allen W. Barkley:
The best audience is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk.

Barnham:
Alone it stood, while its fellows lay strew'd
Like a four-bottle man in a company screw'd
Not firm on his legs but by no means subdued.

Dave Barry:
Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.

In the Bowling Alley of Tomorrow, there will even be machines that wear rental shoes and throw the ball for you. Your sole function will be to drink beer.

All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow.

I like beer. On occasion, I will even drink beer to celebrate a major event such as the fall of communism or the fact that the refrigerator is still working.

Roland Barthes:
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.

Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack to the feast, from the conversation at the local café to the speech at a formal dinner.

St. Basil:
Drunkenness is the ruin of reason. it is premature old age. It is temporary death.

Baudelaire:
Be always drunken. Nothing else matters...
Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.

Stephen Beaumont:
It is not "just beer," it is a noble and ancient beverage which, like wine, food and television advertising, can be extraordinarily good or unmercifully bad.

Anyone can drink beer, but it takes intelligence to enjoy beer.

Brendan Behan:
I am a drinker with writing problems.

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

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society, except that which makes to road safer, the beer stronger, the old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.

Hilaire Belloc:
The Tipple's aboard and the night is young,
The door's ajar and the Barrel is sprung,
I am singing the best song ever was sung
And it has a rousing chorus.

Wine is the last companion.

Robert Benchley:
Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony.

A friend told him that the particular drink he was drinking was slow poison, and he replied, "So who's in a hurry?"

Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?

Stephen Vincent Benét:
Oh, Georgia booze is mighty fine booze,
The best yuh ever poured yuh,
But it eats the soles right offen yore shoes,
For Hell's broke loose in Georgia.

Arnold Bennett:
In the meantime alcohol produces a delightful social atmosphere that nothing else can produce.

Chuck Berry:
Way down south they had a jubilee,
Them Georgia folks, they had a jamboree.
They were drinking homebrew from a wooden tub,
The folks that were dancin' there got all shook up.

Good Queen Bess:
[Beer] is an excellent wash.

George Best:
I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.

Ambrose Bierce:
Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Bottle-nosed: Having a nose created in the image of its maker.

Feast: A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony & drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.

Rum: Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.

Wheat: A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made.

Wine: God's next best gift to man.

The wine of Arpad Haraszthy has a bouquet all its own. It tickles and titillates the palate. It gurgles as it slips down the alimentary canal. It warms the cockles of the heart, and it burns the sensitive lining of the stomach.

An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode.

Jim Bishop:
A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

John Stuart Blackie:
Wine is the drink of the gods, milk the drink of babes, tea the drink of women, and water the drink of beasts.

William Blake:
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.

Robert Bloch:
I figure everything after three scotches is philosophical.

Humphrey Bogart:
The trouble with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.

There never seems to be any trouble brewing around a bar until a woman puts that high heel over the brass rail. Don't ask me why, but somehow women at bars seem to create trouble among men.

Esquire:  Were you drunk at 4 A.M.?
Bogart:  Isn't everybody.

Lily Bollinger:
I drink champagne only when I'm happy, and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty.

Erma Bombeck:
Never accept a drink from a urologist.

George Borrow:
Good ale, the true and proper drink of Englishmen. He is not deserving of the name of Englishman who speaketh against ale, that is good ale.

James Boswell:
Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living.

William Bostwick:
Humankind was built on beer. From the world's first writing to its first laws, in rituals social, religious and political, civilization is soaked in beer.

Christian Nevell Bovee:
Wine is a treacherous friend who you must always be on guard for.

Ray Bradbury:
Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.

Anne Bradstreet:
For he that loveth wine, wanteth no woes.

Richard Braunstein:
The hard part about being a bartender is figuring out who is drunk and who is just stupid.

Meyer Breslau:
Beer that is not drunk has missed its vocation.

Jimmy Breslin:
In a world where there is a law against people ever showing their emotions, or ever releasing themselves from the grayness of their days, a drink is not a social tool. It is a thing you need in order to live.

When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.

Bridget of Sweden:
Wine is wholesome, gives health to the sick, joy to the sorrowful, courage and bravery to those who are well.

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin:
Burgundy makes you think of silly things, Bordeaux makes you talk about them, and Champagne makes you do them.

A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. 'Much obliged', said he, pushing the plate aside; 'I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills.'

Those who give themselves indigestion or get drunk, do not know how to eat or drink.

A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine.

To claim that wines should not be changed is a heresy; the palate becomes saturated and after the third glass the best of wines arouses nothing but an obscure sensation.

Elizabeth Browning:
When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?

The wine must taste of its own grapes.

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

Charles Bukowski:
Stay with the beer. Beer is continuous blood, a continuous lover.

George Burns:
I never go jogging; it makes me spill my martini.

Actually, it takes only one drink to get me loaded. Trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or fourteenth.

Robert Burns:
Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!
What dangers thou canst make us scorn!
Wi' tipenny, we fear nae evil;
Wi' usquebae, we'll face the devil!

No churchman am I for to rail and to write,
No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight,
No sly man of business contriving to snare,
For a big-bellied bottle's the whole of my care.

Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious. We'll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne!

Freedom and Whisky gang thegither.

Go, fetch me a pint o' wine
    And fill it in a silver tassie;
That I may drink before I go
    A service to my bonnie lassie.

Benjamin Hapgood Burt:
One evening in October, when I was one-third sober,
An' taking home a "load" with manly pride,
My poor feet began to stutter, so I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came up an' lay down by my side.
Then we sang "It's all fair weather when good fellows get together,"
Till a lady passing by was heard to say:
"You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses."
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

Sir Richard Burton:
I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.

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

Robert Burton:
I may not here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people. They go commonly together.

Raymond Butler:
Whiskey. It may not be the answer, but it will help you forget the question.

Samuel Butler:
The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given to imagination.

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.

Lord Byron:
Man being reasonable must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication;
Glory, the grape, love, gold - in these are sunk
The hopes of all men and of every nation;
Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk
Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion!

What's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!

'Tis pity wine should be so deleterious,
For tea and coffee leave us much more serious.

There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion.

See Social-Life and Glee sit down
    All joyous and unthinking,
Till, quite transmogrify'd, they're grown
    Debauchery and Drinking.

Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach
Who please, the more because they preach in vain -
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine -
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

Were't the last drop in the well,
As I gasp'd upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell
'Tis to thee that I would drink.

Herb Caen:
Like a camel, I can go without a drink for seven days - and have on several horrible occasions. James Cagney:
A lush can always find a reason if he's thirsty.  Listen.  If he's happy, he takes a couple of shots to celebrate his happiness.  Sad, he needs them to drown his sorrow.  Low, to pick him up; excited, to calm him down.  Sick, for his health; and healthy, it can't hurt him...a lush just can't lose. Callimachus:
Drink now, and love, Democrates; for we
Shall not have wine and boys eternally.

C. S. Calverley:
The heart which grief hath cankered
Hath one unfailing remedy - the tankard.

Albert Camus:
Note in the barracks: "Drink drives out the man and brings out the beast."  Which makes me understand why they like it.

Truman Capote:
I'm an alcoholic, a genuine alcoholic. Not just a fake phony alcoholic, I'm a real alcoholic.

Bob Carbone:
If you can make oatmeal cookies at home, you can brew beer.

Drew Carey:
Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called Everybody, and they meet at the bar.

Billy Carter:
Beer is not a good cocktail-party drink, especially in a home where you don't know where the bathroom is.

There is no such thing as a bad beer. It’s that some taste better than others.

Paintings are like a beer, only beer tastes good and it's hard to stop drinking beer.

Dan Castellaneta:
Beer. Now there’s a temporary solution.

Margaret Cavendish:
Let you and I in Mirth and Pleasure swell,
And drink long lusty droughts from Bacchus' bowl,
Until our brains on vaporous waves do roll.

David Cecil:
You must be careful about giving any drink whatsoever to a bore. A lit-up bore is the worst in the world.

Cervantes:
I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.

Under a bad cloak there is often a good drinker.

Drink moderately, for drunkenness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.

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

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.

Nick Charles:
See, in mixing, the important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan, you shake to foxtrot time; a Bronx to two-step time. But a Martini, you always shake to waltz time. Chaucer:
For dronkennesse is verray sepulture
Of mannes wit and his discrecioun.

In womman vinolent is no defence.

Thou comest home as dronken as a mouse.

I trowe that ye dronken han wyn ape. Anton Pavlovich Chekov:
I am dying. I haven't drunk champagne for a long time. Gilbert Keith Chesterton:
No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness - or as good as drink.

And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
"I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."

St. George he was for England,
And before he killed the dragon
He drank a pint of English ale
Out of an English flagon.

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

For the poor, beer is a necessity, as tobacco is very nearly a necessity; it is only for people sufficiently rich and fashionable to be faddists that either is really a luxury.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

The dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink.

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.

Winston Churchill:
 Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast.

I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.

Most people hate the taste of beer - to begin with. It is, however, a prejudice that many people have been able to overcome.

I make a martini by glancing across the room at the vermouth while the bartender pours the gin.

I may be drunk, but tomorrow I will be sober and you, my dear, will still be fat and ugly.

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

The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whiskey. By diligent effort, I learned to like it.

William Cole:
A hundred standing people smiling and talking to one another, nodding like gooney birds. [describing a cocktail party]

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

George Coleman the Younger:
Mynyeer Vanduck, though he never was drunk,
Sipped brandy and water gayly.

Eddie Condon:
For a bad hangover take the juice of two quarts of whisky.

Sean Connery:
"I told the stewardess liquor for three."
"Who are the other two?"
"Oh, there are no other two."
Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something. William Congreve:
To drink is a Christian diversion
Unknown to the Turk or the Persian.

Joseph Conrad:
It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.

James S.A. Corey:
What is civilization if it isn't people talking to each other over a goddamned beer?

Bill Cosby:
If a white man falls off a chair drunk, it's just a drunk. If a Negro does, it's the whole damn Negro race.

Charles Cotton:
A night of good drinking
Is worth a year's thinking.

Noel Coward:
It's never too early for a cocktail.

Why do I drink champagne for breakfast? Doesn't everyone?





Abraham Cowley:
Fill all the glasses there, for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?

William Cowper:
Drink and be mad, then, 'tis your country bids!
Gloriously drunk, obey the important call.

All learned, and all drunk!

George Crabbe:
Lo! the poor toper whose untutor'd sense
Sees bliss in ale, and can with wine dispense;
Whose head proud fancy never taught to steer,
Beyond the muddy ecstasies of beer.

Cratinus:
Wine, to a gifted bard,
Is a mount that merrily races;
From watered wits
No good has ever grown. e. e. cummings:
humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn you
intelligence to buy a drink.

Rodney Dangerfield:
 I drink too much. Last time I gave a urine sample there was an olive in it.

My doctor told me to watch my drinking. Now I drink in front of a mirror.

I drink too much, way too much; when my doctor drew blood he ran a tab!

I'm a bad drinker. I got loaded one night, the next day they picked me up. I was in front of a judge. He said, 'You're here for drinking.' I said, 'OK, Your Honor, let's get started.'

Tom Dargan:
Making light lager beer is like going to the beach in a thong. You better have all your parts in place or it's going to be ugly.

Joseph Dargent:
No government could survive without champagne. Champagne in the throats of our diplomatic people is like oil in the wheels of an engine.

John Davidson:
Dance and sing, we are eternal;
Let us still be mad with drinking:
'Tis a madness less infernal
Than the madness caused by drinking.

Bette Davis:
There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne. Come on, Oscar, let's you and me go get drunk! David Daye:
If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs.

Walter de Map:
Die I must, but let me die drinking in an inn!
Hold the wine-cup to my lips sparkling from the bin!
So, when the angels flutter down to take me from my sin,
"Ah, God have mercy on this sot," the cherubs will begin.

Edouard de Pomaine:
For a gourmet wine is not a drink but a condiment, provided that your host has chosen correctly.

Thomas de Quincey:
It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.

François de Salignac:
Some of the most dreadful mischiefs that afflict mankind proceed from wine; it is the cause of disease, quarrels, sedition, idleness, aversion to labour, and every species of domestic disorder.

Melchior de Santa Cruz:
If you add water to wine, it ruins it; if you don't, it ruins you.

Alexis de Tocqueville:
An American, instead of going in a leisure hour to dance merrily at some place of public resort, as the fellows of his calling continue to do throughout the greater part of Europe, shuts himself up at home to drink. He thus enjoys two pleasures; he can go on thinking of his own business, and he can get drunk decently by his own fireside.

Bernard de Voto:
You can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth and one of the most short-lived.

Earl Dibbles Jr.:
I got 99 problems & beer solves all of 'em.

Charles Dibdin:
Then trust me there's nothing like drinking
So pleasant on this side the grave;
It keeps the unhappy from thinking
And makes e'en the valiant more brave.

Charles Dickens:
Who comes here?
    A grenadier.
What does he want?
    A pot of beer.

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

Leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and don't ask me to take none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged.

Emily Dickinson:
I did not know the wine
Came once a world, did you?

Phyllis Diller:
I've tried Buddhism, Scientology, Numerology, Transcendental Meditation, Qabbala, t'ai chi, feng shui and Deepak Chopra; but I find straight gin works best.

Diogenes:
He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin.

When asked what wine he liked to drink, he replied, "That which belongs to another."

Disraeli:
There is moderation even in excess.

Henry Austin Dobson:
When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin. I wonder would they know it was me?

Kirk Douglas:
You're all wrong! The best wine is from home, no matter where that is! Norman Douglas:
Wine is a precarious aphrodisiac, and its fumes have blighted many a mating.

Bartholomew Dowling:
Then stand to your glasses steady!
We drink in our comrade's eyes;
Our cup to the dead already -
Hurrah for the next that dies!

Sir Francis Hastings Doyle:
Last night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.

John Dryden:
A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.

Of seeming arms to make a short essay,
Then hasten to be drunk - the business of the day. Bacchus, ever fair and ever young.

Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
    Rich the treasure,
    Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

George DuMaurier:
Life ain't all beer and skittles, and more's the pity.

Isadora Duncan:
Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply, "In my mother's womb, probably as a result of the oysters and champagne - the food of Aphrodite."

It would be much kinder if they sent me champagne while I am alive; they can send me flowers when I am dead.

Finley Peter Dunne:
There is wan thing an' on'y wan thing to be said in favor iv drink, an' that is that it has caused manny a lady to be loved that otherwise might've died single.

Alcohol is nicissary f’r a man so that now an’ thin he can have a good opinion iv himsilf, ondisturbed by th’ facts.

Will & Airel Durant:
Water is the usual drink, but everyone has wine, for no civilization has found life tolerable without narcotics or stimulants.

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.

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.

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.

John Dyer:
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men let him lie.

Thomas Edison:
As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

Bob Edwards:
I am a prohibitionist. What I propose to prohibit is the reckless use of water.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Intemperance is the only vulgarity.

The secret of drunkenness is, that it insulates us in thought, whilst it unites us in feeling.

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

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

Eratosthenes:
Be kind, O Bacchus, take this empty pot,
Offered to thee by Xenophon, the sot,
Who giving this, gives all that he has got.

Gracious Bacchus! Accept this empty jar! You will know best,
What in pious worship of thee became of all the rest.

Euripides:
It's the wise man who stays home when he's drunk.

The man that isn't jolly after drinking
Is just a drivelling idiot, to my thinking.

Clifton Fadiman:
The drinking of wine seems to have a moral edge over many pleasures and hobbies in that it promotes love of one's neighbor. As a general thing it is not a lone occupation. A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.

Liquor is not a necessity. It is a means of momentarily side-stepping necessity.

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

William Faulkner:
There's no such thing as bad whisky.  Some whiskys just happen to be better than others.  But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have the second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there’s no holding me.

Steve Fergosi:
A drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts.

Craig Ferguson:
A number of U.S. colleges are going to start having dorms for alcoholics. I believe those are called dorms.

Henry Fielding:
Today it is our pleasure to be drunk;
And this our queen shall be as drunk as we.

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

W. C. Fields:
I exercise extreme self control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.

How well I remember my first encounter with The Devil's Brew. I happened to stumble across a case of bourbon - and went right on stumbling for several days after.

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?

It's quite true I'm not drinking any more - however, I'm not drinking any less, either.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house unless they have a well-stocked bar.

Say anything that you like about me except that I drink water.

During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days.

'Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never even had the courtesy to thank her for it.

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

Inflation has gone up to over two dollars a quart.

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

Anybody who hates dogs and loves whiskey can't be all bad.

I drink only to steady my nerves. Sometimes I'm so steady I don't move for months.

I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy.

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

I never worry about being driven to drink; I just worry about being driven home.

Wouldn't it be terrible if I quoted some reliable statistics which prove that more people are driven insane through religious hysteria than by drinking alcohol?

The liver is evil and must be punished.

I don't drink water. Fish fuck in it.

I drink with impunity - or anyone else who invites me.

Edward Fitzgerald:
Wile you live,
Drink! - for once dead, you never shall return.

One flash of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.

Fill me with that old familiar juice.

Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash the Body whence the Life has died,
And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf,
By some not unfrequented Gardenside.
That even my buried Ashes such a snare
Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air
As not a True-believer passing by
But shall be overtaken unaware.

And much as Wine has played the Infidel,
And robbed me of my Robe of Honor - Well,
I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaded metal into Gold transmute.

So when that Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff - you shall not shrink.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring,
Your winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing.

Perplexed no more with Human or Divine,
Tomorrow's tangle to the Winds resign.
And lose your Fingers in the Tresses of
The Cypress-slender Minister of Wine.

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

Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears
Today of past Regrets and future Fears;
Tomorrow!  Why, Tomorrow, I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years.

You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse,
I made a second Marriage of my House;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

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

Here's to alcohol, the rose-colored glasses of life.

Sir Alexander Fleming:
If penicillin can cure those who are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.

Ian Fleming:
A dry martini. One. In a deep champagne goblet. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it well until it's very cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?

I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well made. John Fletcher:
Drink today and drown all sorrow;
You shall perhaps not do't tomorrow.

Come, landlord, fill the flowing bowl until it does run over,
Tonight we all will merry be - tomorrow we'll get sober.

Nick Floyd:
I love the smell of hops in the morning. It smells like victory.

Gerald R. Ford:
The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earfull, a bellyfull and a snootfull at the same time?

John Ford:
We can drink till all look blue.

Jeff Foxworthy:
The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house.

Benjamin Franklin:
Eat not to dullness, drink not to elation.

Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the root of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. There can’t be good living where there is not good drinking.

Before Noah, men having only water to drink, could not find the truth. Accordingly...they became abominably wicked, and they were justly exterminated by the water they loved to drink. This good man, Noah, having seen that all his contemporaries had perished by this unpleasant drink, took a dislike to it; and God, to relieve his dryness, created the vine and revealed to him the art of making le vin. By the aid of this liquid he unveiled more and more truth.

Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.

Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water.

Nothing more like a Fool than a drunken Man.

The antediluvians were all very sober
For they had no wine and brewed no October;
All wicked, bad livers, on mischief still thinking,
For there can’t be good living where there is not good drinking.

Frederick the Great:
It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.

Kinky Friedman:
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

Tony Froggart:
You can't grow up in Australia and not drink beer.

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

Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.

Wine hath drowned more men than the sea. (a variation of the above?)

Will Fyfe:
I'm only a common old working chap,
As anyone can see,
But when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday,
Glasgow belongs to me.

Galileo Galilei:
Wine is sunlight, held together by water.

Fernande Garvin:
Wine makes a symphony of a good meal.

John Gay:
From wine what sudden friendship springs!

Fill ev'ry glass, for wine inspires us,
And fires us
With courage, love and joy.

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

Kahil Gibran:
And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful."

Andrew Gidé:
Drunkenness is never anything but a substitute for happiness. It amounts to buying the dream of a thing when you haven't money enough to buy the dreamed-of thing materially.

Alexis A. Gilliland:
The trouble with hell is that the ambient temperature is above the flash point of alcohol. Which means you can't linger over your drink.

George Gissing:
No draught of wine amid the old tombs under the violet sky but made me for the time a better man, larger of brain, more courageous, more gentle. 'Twas a revelry whereon came no repentance. Could I but live for ever in thoughts and feelings such as those born to me in the shadow of the Italian vine!

George Gobel:
I've never been drunk, but I've been overserved.

My uncle was the town drunk - and we lived in Chicago.

Nikolai Gogol:
Go along, go along quickly, and set all you have on the table for us. We don't want doughnuts, honey buns, poppy cakes, and other dainties; bring us a whole sheep, serve a goat and forty-year old mead! And plenty of vodka, not vodka with all sorts of fancies, not with raisins and flavorings, but pure foaming vodka, that hisses and bubbles like mad.

Oliver Goldsmith:
Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain,
With grammar, and nonsense, and learning;
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives genius a better discerning.

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.

Joan Goldstein:
There is nothing for a case of nerves like a case of beer.

Frederick Goodyear:
I hope you are not one of those people who get drunk on the idea of alcohol (blessed word). It is really very curious that people get more muddled in their heads by thinking about intoxicants than by drinking them.

J. B. Gough:
Every moderate drinker could abandon the intoxicating cup if he would; every inebriate would if he could.

Thomas Guthrie:
Whisky is a good thing in its place. There is nothing like it for preserving a man when he is dead. If you want to keep a man dead, put him in whisky; if you want to kill a live man, put whisky in him.

Robert Hall:
Call things by their right names...Glass of brandy and water! This is the current but not the appropriate name: ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.

Tom T. Hall:
Whiskey's too rough,
Champagne costs too much,
Vodka puts my mouth in gear.
I hope this refrain,
Will help me explain,
As a matter of fact,
I like beer.

Philip G. Hamerton:
It is said that beer drinkers are slow, and a little stupid; that they have an ox-like placidity not quite favorable to any brilliant intellectual display.  But there are times when this placidity is what the laboring brain most needs.  After the agitations of too active thinking there is safety in a tankard of ale.  The wine drinkers are agile, but they are excitable; the beer drinkers are heavy, but in their heaviness there is peace.

Jack Handey:
Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed.  Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams.  If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered.  Then I say to myself, 'It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than to be selfish and worry about my liver.'

Raymond Hankins:
One pint of beer...equals 1/2 college credit in philosophy.

Joel Chandler Harris:
Licker talks mighty loud w'en it gits loose from de jug.

Phil Harris:
I can't die until the government finds a safe place to bury my liver.

Nathanial Hawthorne:
Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

John Hay:
Wine is like rain: when it falls on the mire it but makes it the fouler, but when it strikes good soil wakes it to beauty and bloom.

W. Knox Haynes:
One drink is plenty;
Two drinks too many,
And three not half enough. Maurice Healy:
And there are few things in this life so revolting as sipped beer. But let it go down your throat "as suds go down a drain," and you quickly realize that this is a true friend, to be admitted to your most secret counsels. Long draughts with an open throat are the secret.

Robert A. Heinlein:
Here's to alcoholic brotherhood - more suited to the frail human soul than any other sort.

Beer’s intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss.

Sir Arthur Helps:
Put a man in a room where he can play dominoes, read newspapers, and have what he considers a good talk; and you will observe that he will not drink as fast or as deep, or as strongly as he otherwise would. In short, there would be other things to amuse him besides drinking; and what does he drink for, but to amuse himself, and to forget troubles of every kind?



Ernest Hemingway:
 An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.

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

This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.

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.

I decided to stop drinking with creeps. I decided to drink only with friends. I’ve lost 30 pounds.

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

William Henley:
The Spirit of Wine
Sang in my glass, and I listened
With love to his odorous music,
His flushed and magnificent song.

King Henry VIII:
Hops are a wicked and pernicious weed.

O. Henry:
There are two times when you can never tell what is going to happen. One is when a man takes his first drink; and the other is when a woman takes her latest.

Heraclitus:
Although it is better to hide our ignorance, this is hard to do when we relax over wine.

A. P. Herbert:
Teetot'lers seem to die the same as others,
So what's the use of knocking off the beer?

George Herbert:
Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame,
When once it is within thee.

Oliver Herford:
God made Man
    Frail as a bubble;
God made Love,
    Love made Trouble.
God made the Vine,
    Was it a sin
That Man made Wine
    To drown trouble in?

A soft drink turneth away company.

Herodotus:
The Persians...are accustomed to deliberate on matters of the highest moment when they are warm with wine, but whatever they in this situation may determine is again proposed...in their cooler moments...Whatever also they discuss when sober, is always a second time examined after they have been drinking. Herrick:
Drink wine, and live here blitheful while ye may;
The morrow's life too late is, live to-day.

John Heywood:
The butler and the beer horse both be like one:
They draw beer both; that is truth to bide one.
They draw beer, indeed, but yet they differ, Joan;
The butler draweth and drinketh beer, the horse drinketh none.

I pray thee let me and my fellow have a haire of the dog that bit us last night.

John Hickenlooper: (co-founder of )
People forget you had to explain beer styles 50 times a night. It was like being the first one on the Santa Fe Trail - a lot of boulders to move.

Hank Hill:
Contrary to popular belief, beer is not a vice - it's a daily discipline.

Dave Hoffman:
When I make a beer I want it to fit exactly into style. Who the hell are you to try to create your own style? Those styles have been defined over 200 years.

Daryl Hogue:
I have two kids, and over the years I've developed a really relaxed attitude about the whole child-rearing thing. I don't cry over spilt milk. Spilt vodka, that's another story.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil who has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk.

Homer:
Inflaming wine, pernicious to mankind.

Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Hugh Hood:
Nothing ever tasted better than a cold beer on a beautiful afternoon with nothing to look forward to than more of the same.

Horace:
Bacchus drowns within the bowl
Troubles that corrode the soul.

Bacchus opens the gate of the heart.

No poems can live long or please that are written by water-drinkers. Melt me this cold, freely the firelogs throwing
On hearth, my Thaliarchus, And from crock
Two-eared of Sabine make, unlock
Wine, with four years a-glowing!

Who after wine, talks of war's hardships or of poverty?

What does drunkenness not accomplish? It unlocks secrets, confirms our hopes, urges the indolent into battle, lifts the burden form anxious minds, teaches new arts.

Now is the time for drinking, now is the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot.

Alfred Edward Housman:
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh, many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think.

Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking
Spins the heavy world around.

Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

Oh, I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer;
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain
Happy till I woke again.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

Could man be drunk forever
With liquor, love and fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
And lief lie down at nights.

Richard Hovey:
Eleazar Wheelock was a very pious man;
He went into the wilderness to teach the Indian,
With a Gradus ad Parnassum, a Bible, and a drum,
And five hundred gallons of New England rum.
Eleazar was the faculty, and the whole curriculum
Was five hundred gallons of New England rum.

William Dean Howles:
Yes, death is at the bottom of the cup,
And every one that lives must drink it up;
And yet between the sparkle at the top
And the black lees where lurks that bitter drop,
There swims enough good liquor, Heaven knows,
To ease our hearts of all their other woes.

Victor Hugo:
Upon the first goblet he read this inscription: Monkey wine; upon the second: Lion wine; upon the third: Sheep wine; upon the fourth: Swine wine.  These four inscriptions expressed the descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, that which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the third, that which stupefies; the fourth, that which brutalizes.

God made only water, but man made wine.

John Marcellus Huston:
I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk.

Aldous Huxley:
Champagne has the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife.

Washington Irving:
They who drink beer will think beer.

Michael Jackson: (of The Beer Hunter, not the pop star)
The Blue Nuns of the beer world? "Premium Lager" is often the code on the labels. There is much more to be enjoyed than just the dubious refreshment of the bland, sweetish, international brand of lager, the behaving-badly of a headbanger or a cosily, anorakish bout of beer-boring.

"Best before" dates are nonsense. Most beers can only go downhill from the moment they leave the brewery. There are, though, important exceptions: the minority of beers that are designed to mature in the bottle. "Best before" dates do not do justice to them, either.

Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson:
Take that liquor away; I never touch strong drink. I like it too well to fool with it.

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.

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

Danny Jansen:
The best beer in the world, is the open bottle in your hand!

Thomas Jefferson:
The habit of using ardent spirits by men in office has occasioned more injury to the public, and more trouble to me, than all other causes. Were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask respecting a candidate for office would be, Does he use ardent spirits?

No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whisky.

Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health.

Jerome Klappa Jerome:
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; some one to love and some one 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.

We drink one another's health and spoil your own.

Ben Johnson:
As he brews, so shall he drink.

Let those that merely talk and never think,
That live in the wild anarchy of drink.

Hugh Johnson:
Wine is the pleasantest subject in the world to discuss. All its associations are with occasions when people are at their best; with relaxation, contentment, leisurely meals and the free flow of ideas.

Samuel Johnson:
Claret is the liquor for boys, port for me; but he who aspired to be a hero must drink brandy.

Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is itself a good.

Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,
Wearing out life's evening gray;
Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell,
What is bliss, and which the way?
Thus I spoke; and speaking sigh'ed;
Scarce repressed a starting tear;
When the smiling sage reply'd
Come, my lad, and drink some beer.

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

A man who has been drinking wine at all freely should never go into a new company. With those who have partaken of wine with him he may be pretty well in unison, but he will probably be offensive, or appear ridiculous, to other people.

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.

I do not say it is wrong to produce self-complacency by drinking; I only deny that it improves the mind.

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.

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

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

Thomas Jordan:
Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice,
With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice!

John Keats:
Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than my host's Canary wine?

O' for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deed-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O, for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth.

Now I like claret...For really 'tis so fine - it fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness - then goes down cool and feverless...and lies quiet as it did in the grape; then, it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal Part of it mounts into the brain - not assaulting the cerebral apartments like a bully in a bad-house...but rather walks like Aladdin about his own enchanted place so gently that you do not feel his step.

Wine is sweet only to happy men.

Robert Earl Keen:
The road goes on forever but the party never ends.

Jack Kerouac:
I drink eternally. Drink always and ye shall never die. Keep running after a dog, and he will never bite you; drink always before the thirst, and it will never come upon you.

Why on earth aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.

Jean Kerr:
Even though a number of people have tried, no one has yet found a way to drink for a living.

Stephen King:
A man who lies about beer makes enemies.

Sam Kinison:
I called a detox center - just to see how much it would cost: $13,000 for three and a half weeks! My friends, if you can come up with thirteen grand, you don't have a problem.

Eartha Kitt:
People these days are thinking less and drinking more.

Sarah Kemble Knight:
I ask thy Aid, O Potent Rum!
Th charm these wrangling Topers Dum.
Thou hast their Giddy Brains possest-
The man confounded with the Beast-
And I, poor I, can get no rest.
Intoxicate them with thy fumes;
O still their Tongues till morning comes!

Jim Koch:
Don't forget to stop and smell the hops.

Chris Laidlaw:
Beer and Rugby are more or less synonymous.

Charles Lamb:
The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals.

If ever I marry a wife,
I'll marry a landlord's daughter
For then I may sit in the bar,
And drink cold brandy and water.

Ann Landers:
People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim. Walter Savage Landor:
A bottle of wine brings as much pleasure as the acquisition of a kingdom, and not unlike it in kind: The senses in both cases are confused and perverted.

Henry Lawson:
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.

Henry Sambroke Leigh:
The rapturous, wild, and ineffable pleasure
Of drinking at somebody else's expense.

Jay Leno:
I think women get more excited about New Year's Eve than men. If you think about it, you can see why. What do you do on New Year's Eve? You get drunk and make a lot of promises you don't keep. You see, men do that all the time, it's called dating.

Virgin Airlines announced that their new giant double-decker airplane has a private bar. It's a private bar? Is there a big problem with passengers from other planes stopping in for a drink?

Shane Leslie:
Cocktails have all the disagreeability without the utility of a disinfectant.

Oscar Levant:
I don't drink liquor. I don't like it. It makes me feel good.

I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.

Ross Levy:
Drinking provides a beautiful excuse to pursue the one activity that truly gives me pleasure, hooking up with fat, hairy girls.

Joe E. Lewis:
I always wake up at the crack of ice.

I distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink.

It pays to get drunk with the best people.

I drink to forget I drink.

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

Whenever someone asks me if I want water with my Scotch, I say, "I'm thirsty, not dirty."

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

Li Yeh:
It is good to get drunk once in a while.
What else is there to do?

Wendy Liebman:
The only way to have safe sex is to abstain. From drinking.

Abraham Lincoln:
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. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity.

It has long been recognized that the problems with alcohol relate not to the use of a bad thing, but to the abuse of a good thing.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.

Vachel Lindsay:
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom.

Anita Loos:
Always go to a solitary drinker for the truth!

Richard Lovelace:
When thirsty grief in wine we steep
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes, that tipple in the deep,
Know no such liberty.

Martin Luther: We old folks have to find our cushions and pillows in our tankards. Strong beer is the milk of the old.

Beer is made by men, wine by God.

Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; who ever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer! (attributed)

John Lyly:
Long quaffing maketh a short life.

Pat MacDonald (Timbuk3):
I gotta job waiting for my graduation
Fifty thou a year will buy a lotta beer

Shirley MacLaine:
It's useless to hold a person to anything he says while he's in love, drunk, or running for office.

William Maginn:
When a man is drunk, it is no matter upon what he has got drunk.

Phil Markowski:
I have no doubt that America is the best place to be a brewer because we don't have the burden of having to carry on a long brewing tradition. We have more freedom to be creative and can gather influences from all over.

Duke of Marlbourough:
No soldier can fight unless he is properly fed on beef and beer.

Don Marquis:
Drink helps us to penetrate the veil; it gives us glimpses of the Magi of creation where they sit weaving their spells and sowing their seeds of incantation to the flowing mind.

an old stomach
reforms more whisky drinkers
than a new resolve

Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be.  We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not walk at all, but recline in a wheelchair and bellow for alcoholic beverages; in the winter we shall sit by the fire with our feet in a bucket of hot water, a decanter of corn whisky near at hand, and write ribald songs against organized society...We shall know that the Almost Perfect State is here when the kind of old age each person wants is possible to him.  Of course, all of you may not want the kind we want...some of you may prefer prunes and morality to the bitter end.

Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer, and denies you the beer to cry into.

Frederick Marryat:
They say that you may always know the grave of a Virginian as, from the quantity of julep he has drunk, mint invariably springs up where he has been buried.

I must...descant a little upon the mint-julep, as it is, with the thermometer at 100 degrees F. [37° C], one of the most delightful and insinuating potations that ever was invented, and may be drunk with equal satisfaction when the thermometer is as low as 70 degrees [21° C].

Martial:
You make any number of promises when you have been drinking all evening. Next morning you won't keep one. Drink in the morning, Pollio.

Afer is a sober man; he does not drink. What is that to me? I commend a slave for temperance, not a friend.

It is a mistake to think that Acerra reeks of yesterday's liquor: Acerra always drinks till next morning.

Dean Martin:
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

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

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.
Groucho Marx:
I was T. T. until prohibition.

John Masefield:
So I'm for drinking honestly, and dying in my boots.

Gerald Massey:
And if I drink oblivion of a day
So shorten I the stature of my soul.

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

Michelle Mastrolacasa:
Life is a waste of time, time is a waste of life, so get wasted all the time and have the time of your life.

F. X. Matt:
I like to say dark beer is a little bit like going to church: Everybody talks about it, but few people actually go.

W. Somerset Maugham:
To drink a glass of sherry when you can get a dry martini is like taking a stagecoach when you can travel by the Orient Express.

Fred Maytag:
It's very hard to get pretentious about beer. You can become knowledgeable and start to talk with a highfalutin' vocabulary. But you can only go so far with beer, and I've always liked that.

Charles McCabe:
Winston Churchill's habit of guzzling a quart or two a day of good cognac is what saved civilization from the Luftwaffe, Hegelian logic, Wagnerian love-deaths, and potato pancakes.

Malachy McCourt:
I haven't touched a drop of alcohol since the invention of the funnel.

Shane McGowan:
When I need a light inside me, I walk into a pub and drink 15 pints of beer.

Ray McNeill:
Beer is the reason we get up each afternoon.

Michael McShane:
This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord has intended a more divine form of consumption. Let us give praise to our maker and glory to His bounty by learning about beer. Mehri:
Each subtlety hard for the pedant to solve
I found a drop of wine would dissolve.

Herman Melville:
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Menander:
Count not the cups; not therein lies excess,
In wine, but in the nature of the drinker.

Henry Louis Mencken:
I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark.

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

A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses.

Mike Miles:
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? Ha! For me, it's 5 or 6 beers while watching the game; getting so drunk I've forgotten my name. These are a few of MY favorite things.

Edna St. Vincent Millay:
I drank at every vine.
    The last was like the first.
I came upon no wine
    So wonderful as thirst.

A. A. Milne:
Of beer an enthusiast has said that it could never be bad, but that some brands might be better than others.

John Milton:
Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
Crush'd the sweet poison of misuséd wine.

Lords are lordliest in their wine.

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

Henry Mitchell:
Never drink from your finger bowl - it contains only water.

Molière:
Ah, bottle, my friend, why do you empty yourself?

Charles Montague:
Burgundy was the winiest wine, the central, essential, and typical wine, the soul and greatest common measure of all the kindly wines of the earth.

Susan Moodie:
A serpent lurks within the ruby wine,
    Guileful and strong as him who erst betray'd
The world's first parents in their bowers of joy.

John Mooney:
If your doctor warns that you have to watch your drinking, find a bar with a mirror.

Thomas Moore:
Come, send round the wine, and leave points of belief
To simpleton sages and reasoning fools.

    Wreath the bowl
    With flowers of soul,
The brightest Wit can find us;
    We'll take flight
    Tow'rds heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us.

Here's to a friend. He knows you well and likes you just the same. May we have more and more friends, and need them less and less. Pour deep the rosy wine and drink a toast with me; Here's to three: Thee, Wine, and Camaraderie!

Rick Moranis:
Me and my brother always said drowning in beer would be like dying and going to heaven. Now he's gone, I got two soakers...This isn't heaven, this sucks! Sydney Owenson Morgan:
You see, madam, your wine is like the nepenthe of Helen, for it gives the cares as well as the senses of your guests to oblivion.

Mike Moriarity:
A bar or a tavern is a place where you can buy a glass of draught beer for fifteen cents. Unfortunately these are the very places that are most corrupted by TV. No more real thinking! No more real drinking! The end of an era!

Christopher Morley:
A drink has been arranged and will shortly take place.

That faint but sensitive enteric expectancy which suggests the desirability of a cocktail.

Jim Morrison:
It’s like gambling somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don’t know where you’re going to end up the next day. It could work out good or it could be disastrous. It’s like the throw of the dice.

Henry Vollam Morton:
One drink of wine, and you act like a monkey; two drinks, and you strut like a peacock; three drinks, and you roar like a lion; and four drinks - you behave like a pig. Alfred de Musset:
My glass is not large, but I drink out of my own.

Gerald Nachman:
The best thing about a cocktail party is being asked to it.

Ogden Nash:
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

There is something about a Martini;
A tingle remarkably pleasant,
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish that I had one present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth-
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

George Jean Nathan:
 I drink to make other people interesting.

Nicharchus:
Bound to die? Were I a gymnast 'twould be the same?
Why mind then if by gout I drink myself dead-lame?
Either way be carried? So, wine - let lamps be lit!
While life still laughs, we'll make a merry night of it!

Jack Nicholson:
Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world.

Friedrich Nietzsche:
There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one's self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication.

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

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

Without beer, life would be a mistake.

Conan O'Brien:
According to the 'New York Daily News', bars all across the city are installing breathalyzer vending machines telling people whether they've had too much to drink. Apparently, if you're drunk, the machine warns you not to drive; and if you're really drunk, it warns you not to call your ex-girlfriend.

Kevin C. O'Higgins:
When I think of the hardship involved in having only seven hours to drink on a Sunday my soul shudders.

William Oldys:
Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
Drink with me, and drink as I.

Joseph O'Leary:
Whisky, drink divine!
Why should drivelers bore us
With the praise of wine
While we've thee before us?

P. J. O'Rourke:
The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.

Never refuse wine. It is an odd but universally held opinion that anyone who doesn't drink must be an alcoholic.

José Ortega y Gasset:
The drunken man's happiness is blind. Like everything in the world it has a cause, the alcohol; but it has no motive.

George Orwell:
In the matter of drink, the only result of a century of "temperance" agitation has been a slight increase in hypocrisy.

Clarence Ousley:
When the mint is in the liquor and its fragrance on the glass,
It breathes a recollection that can never, never pass.

Ovid:
When there is plenty of wine, sorrow and worry take wing.

Bill Owen:
Give a man a beer, waste an hour. Teach a man to brew, and waste a lifetime!

Clementine Paddleford:
Beer is the Danish national drink, and the Danish national weakness is another beer.

Dorothy Parker:
 I like to drink martinis
Two at the very most.
Three, I'm under the table;
Four, I'm under my host.

Three highballs, and I think I'm St. Francis of Assisi.

They resumed friendly relations only in the brief magnanimity caused by liquor, before more liquor drew them into new battle.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. (This has been variously attributed.)

Blaise Pascal:
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

Louis Pasteur:
Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.

Tom Pastorius: (president of Pennsylvania Brewing)
It's time they used their imagination and came up with another thing to tax. Beer is not a sin. Beer is good for you and everybody should drink beer.

Walter Pater:
I hardly know wherein philosophy and wine are alike unless it be in this, that the philosophers exchange their ware for money, like the wine-merchants; some of them with a mixture of water or worse, or giving short measure.

Thomas Peacock:
Not drunk is he who from the floor
Can rise along and still drink more
But drunk is he who prostrate lies
Without the power to drink or rise.

A heeltap!  A heeltap!  I never could bear it!
So fill me a bumper, a bumper of claret!

There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. Prevention is better than cure.

Cyril Pearl:
If you carry out a blindfold test...you'll find that the beer snob is just as much a galah as the wine snob.

William Penn:
All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and bad.

The smaller the drink, the clearer the head, and the cooler the blood.

Walter Percy:
Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.

Antonio Perez:
Wine is an old man's milk.

Johnston Peter:
I really don't drink, but I'll split a quart with you.

Philip, Duke of Edinburgh:
Champagne and orange juice is a great drink. The orange improves the champagne. The champagne definitely improves the orange.

Plato:
Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth hear, for it is wrong to add fire to fire.

He was a wise man who invented beer.

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

Pliny:
It has become quite a common proverb that in wine there is truth.  (In vino veritas.)

Edgar Allen Poe:
Filled with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber,
Through the chamber of my brain -
Quaintest thoughts - queerest fancies -
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.

Bill Pollman: (Bartender at the Fox & Hounds Tavern in St. Louis)
Bars are about people having conversations. My biggest job is to introduce people and give them some commonality.

Alexander Pope:
There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.

Stephen Potter:
A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste, and vice versa.

Richard Porson:
I went to Frankfurt, and got drunk
With the most learn'd professor, Brunck;
I went to Worms, and got more drunken
With that more learn'd professor, Ruhnken.

William Powell:
The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now, a Manhattan you always shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time. Terry Pratchett:
There are better things in life than alcohol, but alcohol makes up for not having them.

George Dennison Prentice:
When a man has been intemperate so long that shame no longer paints a blush upon his cheek, his liquor generally does it instead.

Roger Protz
Many people tell me they have visited the US, failed to find anything drinkable and turned in desperation to imported Bass and Guinness. They are unaware that some 400 (now nearly 1,500) micro, craft, new wave or "specialty" brewers now operate, many of them concentrating on ales of remarkable quality.

François Rabelais:
There are...more old drunkards than old physicians.

I drink no more than a sponge.

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

Sir Walter Raleigh:
It were better for a man to be subject to any vice than to drunkenness, for all other vanities and sins are recovered, but a drunkard will never shake off the delight of beastliness; for the longer it possesseth a man, the more he will delight in it, and the older he groweth the more he shall be subject to it, for it dulleth the spirits and destroyeth the body, as ivy doth the old tree.

Tony Randall:
When totally disgusted with the human race, I become a social drinker. Mitch Ratliffe:
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Gregory Ratoff:
John [Huston], if you weren't the son of my beloved friend Walter, and if you weren't a brilliant writer and a magnificent director, you'd be nothing but a common drunk.

Ravenscroft:
Nose, Nose, Nose, Nose?
And what gave thee that jolly red Nose?
Cinnamon and Ginger, Nutmeg and Cloves,
And that gave me my jolly red Nose.

Agnes Repplier:
If a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.

Friedrich Wilhelm Riese:
Where else can you find you such good beer? So brown and stout and healthful too! The porter's health I drink to you! Yes, hurrah the hops, and hurrah the malt, they are life's flavors and life's salt! Tom Robbins:
Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.

Nora Roberts:
I want a beer. I want a giant, ice-cold bottle of beer and shower sex.

Edwin Arlington Robinson:
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

Earl Rochester:
If you have a grateful heart (which is a miracle amongst you statesmen), show it by directing the bearer to the best wine in town, and pray let not this highest point of sacred friendship be performed slightly, but go about it with all due deliberation and care, as holy priests to sacrifice, or as discreet thieves to the wary performance of burglary and shop-lifting.  Let your well-discerning palate (the best judge about you) travel from cellar to cellar and then from piece to piece till it has lighted on wine fit for its noble choice and my approbation.

Karyl Roosevelt:
Drunks are rarely amusing unless they know some good songs and lose a lot at poker.

L. Rosenstiel:
Brandy, whisky - liquor generally - can be quite beneficial except that it - like sugar, salt, and many other things - if taken in excess liquor can be very harmful.

Bertrand Russell:
Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.

I am as drunk as a lord, but then, I am one, so what does it matter?

Rafael Sabatini:
Thirstily he set it to his lips, and as its cool refreshment began to soothe his throat, he thanked Heaven that in a world of much evil there was still so good a thing as ale.

George Saintsbury:
All alcoholic drinks, rightly used, are good for body and soul alike; but as a restorative of both there is nothing like brandy.

Scaliger:
The sot Loserus is drunk twice a day,
Bibinus only once; now of these say,
Which may a man the greatest drunkard call?
Bibinus still, for he's drunk once and all.

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

Arnold Schwarzenegger:
Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.

Sir Walter Scott:
A glass of good wine is a gracious creature, and reconciles poor morality to itself, and that is what few things can do.

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

Scott and Smith:
"Bar" is a nasty, a horrible word,
"Taprooms" and "taverns" and "pubs" are absurd;
Give us a name with a resonant boom,
A respectable name like "beverage room."

Seinfeld:
Can't we just get rid of wine lists? Do we really have to be reminded every time we go out to a nice restaurant that we have no idea what we are doing? Why don't they just give us a trigonometry quiz with the menu?

John Selden:
'Tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess.

Seneca:
Drunkenness does not create vice; it merely brings it into view.

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

Wine kindles anger.

Pete Sermond:
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!

William Shakespeare:
Drink...provokes and unprovokes, 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.

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.

Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.

Give me a bowl of wine:
I have not that alacrity of spirit,
Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.

And let me the canakin clink:
    A soldier's but a man;
    A life's but a span;
Why then let a soldier drink.

Good wine needs no bush. Give me to drink mandragora
That I might sleep out this great gap of time
My Anthony is away.

One draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads him, and a third drowns him.

Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with pink eye!
In thy fats our cares he drown'd,
With thy grapes our hairs be crown'd:
Cup us, till the world go round!

O thou invisible spirit of wine! If thou has no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them is to foreswear thin potations.

A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it.  It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes...The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme.  It illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valor comes of sherris.

Every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is a devil.

There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer.

I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.

I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.

Potations pottle-deep.

A cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't.

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.

I am falser than vows made in wine.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

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.

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

A quart of ale is a dish for a king.

I drink to the general joy o' the whole table.

I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.

And do as adversaries do in law,
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

George Bernard Shaw:
I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.

Alcohol is a very necessary article...It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.

Alcohol produces artificial happiness, artificial courage, artificial gaiety, artificial self-satisfaction, thus making life bearable for millions who would otherwise be unable to endure their condition. To them alcohol is a blessing. Unfortunately, as it acts by destroying conscience, self-control, and the normal functioning of the body, it produces crime, disease, and degradation.

What is better than to sit at the end of the day and drink wine with friends, or substitutes for friends?

R. B. Sheridan:
A bumper of good liquor
Will end a contest quicker
Than justice, judge or vicar.

    Let the toast pass;
    Drink to the lass;
I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass!

William T. Sherman:
Grant stood my me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.

Toots Shor:
Anybody that can't get drunk by midnight ain't trying.

Edward Rowland Sill:
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!

Homer Simpson:
Bart, a woman is like a beer. They look good, they smell good, and you'd step over your own mother just to get one.

All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me - so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer.

Just think, I turned to a cult for mindless happiness when I had beer all along.

Alcohol, the cause and solution to all of life's problems.

Oh, Lisa, you and your stories: Bart's a vampire, beer kills brain cells. Now let's go back to that--building--thingie--where our beds and TV--is.

I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer.

When that guy turned water into wine, he obviously wasn't thinking of us Duff drinkers.

Beer: So much more than just a breakfast drink.

Frank Sinatra:
I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day. Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.

Sydney Smith:
What two ideas are more inseparable than Beer and Brittania? What event more awfully important to an English colony than the erection of its first brewhouse?

Herman "Jackrabbit" Smith-Johanssen:
Stay busy, get plenty of exercise, and don't drink too much. Then again, don't drink too little.

John C. Squire:
But I'm not so think as you drunk I am.

Stanlicus:
He who drinks one glass a day
Will live to die some other way.

Gertrude Stein:
It is funny the two things men are proudest of are the things that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is, being drunk and being the father of their son.

Sir Richard Steele:
I will come within a pint of wine.

A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband.

Sterne:
The ancient Goths of Germany...[debated] everything of importance to their state twice; that is, once drunk and once sober: Drunk - that their councils might not want of vigor; and sober - that they might not want discretion. Robert Louis Stevenson:
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest-
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest-
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

It's a long time between drinks. Wine is bottled poetry.

James Stewart:
Champagne is a great levelerer - leveler.  It makes you my equal.

Champagne's funny stuff.  I'm used to whiskey.  Whiskey is a slap on the back, and champagne's a heavy mist before my eyes.

John Still:
I cannot eat but little meat;
    My stomach is not good;
But sure I think that I can drink
    With him that wears a hood.
That I go bare, take ye no care,
    I am nothing a-cold:
I stuff my skin so full within
    Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side go bare, go bare,
    Both foot and hand go cold;
But belly, God sent the good ale enough,
    Whether it be new or old.

Jonathan Swift:
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

Much drinking, little thinking.

Taverns are places where madness is sold by the bottle.

This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.

Publius Syrus:
He injures the absent who quarrels with a drunken man.

You need not hang up the ivy-branch over the wine that will sell. To dispute with a drunkard is to debate with an empty house.

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

Robert Tefton:
Drunkenness: A temporary but popular cure for Catholicism.

Sir William Temple:
The first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.

Theognis:
Wine is wont to show the mind of man.

Dylan Thomas:
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.

Hunter S. Thompson:
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

Good people drink good beer. Henry David Thoreau:
Water is the only drink for a wise man.

James Thurber:
It's a naive domestic burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

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.

Paul Tomkins:
If you enjoy your alcohol, remember this: If you put your old, rotten liver under your pillow, the Beer Fairy will leave you a keg.

Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna:
Why, it seems every man as gets his wages is expected to lay out a shilling in drink, at the tap where they wait for the money.  'Tis all of a piece with the rest of the robbery plan; but a man can't help himself - he must do like the rest.

William Trevor:
No alcoholic liquor was ever served in the Ballroom of Romance, the premises not being licensed for this added stimulant.  Mr. Dwyer in fact had never sought a license for any of his premises, knowing that romance and alcohol were difficult commodities to mix, especially in a dignified ballroom.

Mark Twain:
Give an Irishman lager for a month and he's a dead man.  An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it.  But whisky polishes the copper and is the saving of him.

What marriage is to morality, a properly conducted licensed liquor traffic is to sobriety.

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

Water taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.

Too much of anything is bad, but too much champagne is just right.

Queen Victoria:
Give my people plenty of beer, good beer, and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them.

Gore Vidal:
Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

François Villon:
These traitorous thieves, accurséd and unfair,
The vintners that put water in our wine.

Voltaire:
Englishmen are like their own beer: Frothy on top, dregs on the bottom, the middle excellent.

Johann von Schiller:
When the wine goes in, strange things come out.

Johann Heinrich Voss:
Who loves not women, wine and song
Remains a fool his whole life long.

Andrey Voznesensky:
Where people drink, they spill.

Brock Wagner:
If you are doing this just because you want to make money, your beer has no soul.

Tom Waits:
I don't have a drinking problem except when I can't get one.

The piano has been drinking, not me.

David Rains Wallace:
Fermentation may have been a greater discovery than fire.

Thomas Warton:
Thus too, the matchless bard, whose lay resounds
The Splendid Shilling's praise, in nightly gloom
Of lonesome garret, pined for cheerful ale.

All-powerful Ale! Whose sorrow-soothing sweets
Oft I repeat in vacant afternoon.

With British ale improving British worth.

Denzel Washington:
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.

George Washington:
I use no porter...in my family, but such as is made in America: both these articles may now be purchased of an excellent quality.

Evelyn Waugh:
Beer is acceptable very late at night at the end of a party. It has many valuable functions but I cannot help thinking that it has been a little overpraised in the immediate past by poets of the school of Chesterton and Bellow. It is a fine honest staple rather than a theme for poetry.

Beer commercials are so patriotic: 'Made the American Way.' What does that have to do with America? Is that what America stands for? Feeling sluggish and urinating frequently?

Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully; she turns her back on a rough approach.

It is difficult to enjoy a good wine in a bad glass.

Charles Henry Webb:
Turn out more ale, turn up the light;
I will not go to bed tonight.

John Webster:
Is not old wine wholesomest?

John Welsh:
I'm going to buy a boat...do a little traveling, and I'm going to be drinking beer! Rudyard Wheatley:
I've always believed that paradise will have my favorite beer on tap.

Oscar Wilde:
Work is the curse of the drinking class. Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses.

Kaiser Wilhelm:
Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.

Tennessee Williams:
A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he isn't still young an' believing.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an' death's the other.

Larry Leon Wilson:
While beer brings gladness, don't forget
That water only makes you wet.

P. G. Wodehouse:
It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of medical thought.

I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.

Alexander Wollcott:
I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.

Morrison Wood:
It is, of course, entirely possible to cook without using wine. It is also possible to wear suits and dresses made out of gunny sacks, but who wants to?

Virginia Woolf:
Wine has a drastic, an astringent taste.  I cannot help wincing as I drink. Ascent of flowers, radiance and heat, are distilled here to a fiery, yellow liquid. Just behind my shoulder-blades some dry thing, wide-eyed, gently closes, gradually lulls itself to sleep. This is rapture. This is relief.

Lawrence Wright:
Man in all periods has been willing to walk miles for a drink, but not for a bath.

Stephen Wright:
24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?

Xenophon:
For drink, there was beer which was very strong when not mingled with water, but was agreeable to those who were used to it. They drank this with a reed, out of the vessel that held the beer, upon which they saw the barley swim.

William Butler Yeats:
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.

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

I have certainly seen more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink or harlots.

A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by note.
A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat.
So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.

Henny Youngman:
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.

Miniature cocktail: You drink one and in a miniature out.

Catherine Zandonella:
Time is never wasted when you're wasted all the time.

Frank Zappa:
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.

MISCELLANEOUS



THE BIBLE

A new friend is as new wine: when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.
     - Ecclesiastes

A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry.
     - Ecclesiastes

A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.
     - Ecclesiastes

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them.
     - Isaiah

Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.  At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
     - Proverbs

Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.  Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.
     - Proverbs

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.
     - Proverbs

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?  They that tarry long at the wine.
     - Proverbs

Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.
     - Proverbs

Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
     - Song of Solomon

Like the best wine...that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
     - Song of Solomon

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine other infirmities.
     - I Timothy

THE APOCRYPHA

How exceeding strong is wine! It causeth all men to err who drink it.

Wine and women will make men of understanding to fall away.

THE QUR'AN

There is a devil in every berry of the grape.

PROVERBS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Good wine praises itself.    - Arabian

When the cock is drunk, he forgets about the hawk.    - Ashanti

Pretty wife, old wine - many friends.    - Bulgarian

If you want a plan by which to stop drinking, look at a drunken man when you are sober.    - Chinese

Truth dribbles out after wine dribbles in.    - Chinese

The government will fall that raises the price of beer.    - Czech

A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it's better to be thoroughly sure.    - Czech

What the sober man has in his heart, the drunken man has on his lips.    - Danish

A mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer.    - Ancient Egyptian

Cider smiles in your face, and then cuts your throat.    - English

Good ale is meat, drink and cloth.    - English

Cider on beer makes good cheer,
Beer on cider makes a bad rider.    - English

Good ale will make a cat speak.    - English

What a man says drunk he has thought sober.    - Flemish

There are more old drunkards than old doctors.    - French

It is only the first bottle that is expensive.    - French

Eat at pleasure, drink by measure.    - French

Nothing equals the joy of the drinker, except the joy of the wine in being drunk.    - French

He who drinks a little too much drinks much too much.    - German

Brandy is lead in the morning, silver at noon, gold at night.    - German

In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria.    - German

The brewery is the best drug store.    - German

Take the drink for the thirst that is yet to come.    - Irish

Sweet is the wine but sour is the payment.    - Irish

Thirst is the end of drinking, and sorrow is the end of drunkenness.    - Irish

When the liquor was gone the fun was gone.    - Irish

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

Old wine and friends improve with age.    - Italian

When wine sinks, words swim.    - Italian

It is the man who drinks the first bottle of saké; then the second bottle drinks the first, and finally it is the saké that drinks the man.   - Japanese Man's way to God is with beer in the hand.    - Koffyar tribe

What soberness conceals, drunkenness reveals.    - Latin

The sober man's secret is the drunken man's speech.    - Russian

The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I'll walk carefully.    - Russian

They speak of my drinking, but never of my thirst.    - Scottish

Loth to drink and loth to leave it off.    - Scottish

Ale sellers should not be tale tellers.    - Scottish

For a bad night, a mattress of wine.    - Spanish

Water for oxen, wine for kings.    - Spanish

One drink is just right; two is too many; three are too few.    - Spanish
    - Cf. Haynes

No children without sex; no drunkenness without beer.    - Sumerian

He who does not know beer dies not knowing what is good.    - Sumerian

A man without a beer is like a lawnmower without grass.    - United States

Over the bottle many a friend is found.    - Yiddish

The innkeeper loves the drunkard, but not for a son-in-law.    - Yiddish

When the beer is in the man, is the wisdom in the can?    - Origin unknown

Beware of the man who does not drink.    - Origin unknown

ANONYMOUS (MORE OR LESS)

I always remember my first martini - by the third one it gets a little fuzzy.

A productive drunk is the bane of moralists.

I fear the man who drinks water
And so remembers this morning what the rest of us said last night.
    - From a Greek anthology, translated by Dudley Fitts

A drink is shorter than a tale.

When the beer bubbles, the masses forget their troubles.    - The People's Daily, Beijing, China

The Beer Prayer
Our lager,
Which art in barrels,
Hallowed be thy drink.
Thy will be drink,
(I will be drunk),
At home as in the tavern.
Give us this day our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who spill against us.
And lead us not to incarceration,
But deliver us from hangovers.
For thine is the beer,
the bitter and the lager.
Forever and ever,
Barmen

I think someone should invent Beerguard, because how often do you actually spill Scotch on the carpet?

Drink a highball at nightfall and be good fellows while you may-
For tomorrow may bring sorrow, so tonight let's all be gay.
    - University of Pennsylvania song

He is not drunk gratis, who pays reason for his shot.

Drunkenness is a pair of spectacles to see the devil and all his works.

There was an old hen
And she had a wooden leg,
And every damned morning
She laid another egg;
She was the best damned chicken
On the whole damned farm-
And another little drink
Wouldn't do us any harm.
     - American folk song

Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadier,
Who caught his death by drinking cold small beer;
Soldiers, take heed from his untimely fall,
And when you're hot, drink strong, or not at all.
     - Epitaph in Winchester Churchyard

I drink, therefore, I am.

Instant Party Animal - Just Add Alcohol!
     - Button

I want a relationship that involves more than sex. Do you drink?

Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink.

Ode to a Drinker
Starkle Starkle, little twink,
Who the heck you are I think.
I'm not under what they call
The alcofluence of incohol.
I'm not drunk as thinkle peep,
I'm just a little slort of sheep.
Tee drinkies makes a guy
Fool so feelish don't know why
Really don't know who's me yet.
The drunker I stay, the longer I get.
So just one more to fill me up.
I've all day sober to Sunday up.

When ale is in, wit is out.
    - 14th Century

Wine is the milk of Venus.
    - Inscription over the door of the Devil Tavern's Apollo Room

Of all the meat in the world, drink goes down the best.

There are more gluttons than drunkards in hell.

An Irishman is not drunk as long as he still has a blade of grass to hang on to.

Remember, Euboulos the sober, you who pass by,
And drink: there is one Hades for all men.
    - From a Greek anthology, translated by Dudley Fitts

O, my dark Rosaleen,
Do not sigh, do not weep!
The priests are on the ocean green,
They march along the deep;
There's wine from the royal Pope,
Upon the ocean green;
And Spanish ale shall give you hope
My dark Rosaleen.
    - 18th c. Irish ballad

The person who frequently is tight as a drum is seldom fit as a fiddle.

Here lies Anacreon: then, stranger, pour
Freely thy wine - I'm thirsty as of yore.
    - Greek epigram

One trouble with modern civilization is that too many people stretch the cocktail hour into three or four.

You have had too much to drink if you feel sophisticated and can't pronounce it.

God in His goodness sent the Grape
    To cheer both great and small;
Little fools sometimes drink too much
    And great fools not at all.
    - Anonymous verse at Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta

A court says a man has the right to get drunk in his own home. Thus is the sanctity of the home preserved.

The selling of bad beer is a crime against Christian love.
    - Law, the City of Augsburg, 13th Century

An alcoholic spends his life committing suicide on the installment plan - that is, he drinks like a fish but not the same thing.

I feel no pain dear mother now,
But oh, I am so dry!
O take me to a brewery,
And leave me there to die.
    - Anonymous, 19th Century

The only advantage of having lived through the Age of Prohibition is that any liquor tasted good.

I was drowning my sorrows, but my sorrows, they learned to swim.
    - U2, "Until the End of the World" If you'd know when you've enough
Of the punch and the claret cup
It's time to quit the blessed stuff
When you fall down and can't get up.

Reality is a hallucination brought on by lack of alcohol.

Beer: Helping ugly people get laid since 8000 BCE.

Oh, I wish I had a barrel of rum and sugar three thousand pounds,
A college bell to put it in and a clapper to stir it 'round,
I'd drink to all good fellows who come from far and near,
I'm a ramblin', gamblin' helluva engineer!
    - Georgia Tech fight song

People who drink and drive are putting the quart before the hearse.

The first thing in the human personality that alcohol dissolves is dignity.

'Tis clear, since Brandy kill'd Tom's scolding wife,
That drinking rids us of the cares of life.

A drunkard is like a whiskey-bottle, all neck and belly and no head.

Life is very similar to beer. Chill for best results.

Whoever serves beer or wine watered down, he himself deserves in them to drown.
    - Medieval exhortation for pure beverages

The corkscrew - a useful key to unlock the storehouse of wit, the treasury of laughter, the front-door of fellowship, and the gate of pleasant folly.

May this bar be blessed with eternal good beer and everlasting good people.
    - Sign at the Brick Store Pub in Decatur, GA

Not all men who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we aren't poets.

In victory, you deserve beer; in defeat, you need it.

Had the earliest morality developed under the influence of beer, there would be not good or evil, there would be "kind of nice" or "pretty cool."
    - Frat boy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Education is important, but cold beer is importanter.
     - Seen at Jobot in Phoenix, AZ

A toast to the Cocktail Party
Where olives are speared
And friends are stabbed.

If drinking is interfering with your work, you're probably a heavy drinker. If work is interfering with your drinking, you're probably an alcoholic.

If, as they say, God spanked this town
For being much too frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And save Hotaling's Whiskey?
    - Poem inspired when San Francisco's largest distillery survived the 1906 quake and subsequent fire

Nothing can be more frequent than an occasional drink.

Friendships are not always preserved in alcohol.

Who needs a born-on date when you're in the delivery room?
    - Sign at River Rock Brewery in Little Rock, AR

Beer: Take pure spring water. The finest grains. The richest ingredients. And then run them through a horse.

For the Liquor of life we do dearly adore,
When the bottles are empty we'll thunder for more,
For to make our hearts cheerful we'll merrily sing
With a rousing full Bumper to Caesar, our King.
    - 17th century ballad

f you mean the demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, then I'm against it. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public coffers to comfort little crippled children, then I'm for it. This is my position, and I will not compromise!
     - An anonymous congressman on whiskey

Rugged Individualism, Beer Linked     - San Antonio (Texas) Express-News headline

I can tell you that the whole micro thing drives [Anheuser-Busch VP of marketing] August Busch IV absolutely nuts. It infuriates him that these upstart companies are coming in and implying that his family's product is lousy.
    - Anonymous beer executive

The road to great wine is littered with beer bottles.

I'm tired of gin
I'm tired of sin
And after last night,
Oh boy, and I tired.

Remember, "I" before "E" except in Budweiser.

To some, it's a six-pack; to me, it's a support group.

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.
     - An anonymous Native American elder

Saint Patrick was a gentleman
Who through strategy and stealth
Drove all the snakes from Ireland
Here's a drinkee to his health!
But not too many drinkees
Lest we lose ourselves and then
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see them snakes again!

Drink what you want, drink what you're able. If you are drinking with me, you'll be under the table.

Draft beer, not people.

I'm not an alcoholic. I drink only two times a year - when it's my birthday, and when it's not my birthday.

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.

Good old days: Beer foamed and drinking water didn't.

Time don't let it slip away,
Raise your drinking glass
Here's to yesterday.
     - Aerosmith

Real women don't drink light beer.   - New Glarus Brewing Co. bumper sticker

Let no man thirst for lack of Real Ale.   - Commonwealth Brewing Co., Boston, Massachusetts

In Vino Veritas
In Cervesio Felicitas
(In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is joy.)

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is joy, in water there is bacteria.

The best beer is where priests go to drink.

Pure water is the best of gifts that man to man can bring,
 But who am I that I should have the best of anything?
  Let princes revel at the pump, let peers with ponds make free,
   Whisky, or wine, or even beer is good enough for me.
   - Anonymous, in the "Spectator", July 31, 1920, sometimes attributed to Hon. G.W.E. Russell or to Lord Neaves

In the event of a major world disaster, you’ll be a lot more popular than some guy who collects stamps.   - Advertisement for Northern Brewer

History flows forward on rivers of beer.

Irish Coffee is the perfect breakfast because it contains all four adult food groups: fat, sugar, caffeine and alcohol.

To alcohol, the nights that you'll never remember, with the friends you'll never forget.

If alcohol is a crutch, then Jack Daniels is the wheelchair.

Beer does not make you fat. It makes you lean - against bars, poles and tables.

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth. (Different sources quote different numbers.)

People tell me to drink less moonshine. I can't find that brand anywhere.

I have yet to meet a woman that I couldn't drink pretty.

Drink and the world drinks with you. Swear off and you drink alone.

Thought when sober, said when drunk.

The beer I had for breakfast
Is comin' back for lunch.
     - Country-western song lyrics

Beer drinking doesn’t do half the harm as love-making.

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.

Beer has food value, but food has no beer value.

Booze consumes 47 times its weight in reality.

I drink to forget, but I never forget to drink.

Don't stir yourself sir! I'll muzzle that inebriated canary!



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