Alcohol Quotes and Sayings

Alcohol Quotes

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

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

A hangover is the wrath of grapes. ~Author Unknown

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

If you must drink and drive, drink Pepsi. ~Author unknown, as seen on a bumper sticker

Draft beer, not people. ~Author Unknown

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

Wine is bottled poetry. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

When the wine goes in, strange things come out. ~Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, The Piccolomini, 1799

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. ~Author Unknown

If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

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

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. ~Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

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. ~Raymond Chandler

If four or five guys tell you that you're drunk, even though you know you haven't had a thing to drink, the least you can do is to lie down a little while. ~Joseph Schenck

This is one of the disadvantages of wine: it makes a man mistake words for thought. ~Samuel Johnson

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

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." ~Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water. ~W.C. Fields

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. ~Thomas de Quincy, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1856

It takes 8,460 bolts to assemble an automobile, and one nut to scatter it all over the road. ~Author unknown, as seen on a bumper sticker

The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind. ~H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, Fourth Series, 1924

Your body is a temple, but keep the spirits on the outside. ~Author Unknown

You don't have to be a beer drinker to play darts, but it helps. ~Author Unknown

Here's to a long life and a merry one

A quick death and an easy one

A pretty girl and an honest one

A cold beer and another one!

~Author Unknown

I like liquor — its taste and its effects — and that is just the reason why I never drink it. ~Stonewall Jackson

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 be selfish and worry about my liver. ~Jack Handey

When the wine is in, the wit is out. ~Proverb

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. ~Frank Sinatra

What's drinking?

A mere pause from thinking!

~George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Deformed Transformed

I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy. ~W.C. Fields

Woman first tempted man to eat; he took to drinking of his own accord. ~Four Hundred Laughs: Or, Fun Without Vulgarity, compiled and edited by John R. Kemble, 1902

 

   

 

Upon occasion we should go as far as intoxication.... Drink washes cares away, stirs the mind from its lowest depths.... But in liberty moderation is wholesome, and so it is in wine.... We ought not indulge too often, for fear the mind contract a bad habit, yet it is right to draw it toward elation and release and to banish dull sobriety for a little. ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca, "On Tranquillity of Mind"

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. ~Dave Barry

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

Wine is how classy people get wasted. ~Author Unknown

The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

I envy people who drink—at least they know what to blame everything on. ~Oscar Levant

Remember: "I" before "E," except in Budweiser. ~Author Unknown

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully. ~Graham Greene

I'll stick with gin. Champagne is just ginger ale that knows somebody. ~M*A*S*H, Hawkeye, "Ceasefire," 1973

No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness — or so good as drink. ~Lord Chesterton

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

We borrowed golf from Scotland as we borrowed whiskey. Not because it is Scottish, but because it is good. ~Horace Hutchinson

Drunkenness is temporary suicide. ~Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

It's like an angel crying on your tongue. ~The Mentalist, "My Bloody Valentine," written by Bruno Heller and Tom Szentgyorgyi, spoken by the character Patrick Jane, about alcohol

Everybody should believe in something; I believe I'll have another drink. ~Author Unknown

Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost. ~Samuel Johnson

Memory impairment: the free prize at the bottom of every vodka bottle. ~Big Bang Theory, "The Agreement Dissection" (season 4, episode 21, original airdate April 28, 2011), written by Lorre, Prady, Molaro, Kaplan, Goetsch, and Gorodetsky, spoken by the character Sheldon Cooper

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth. ~George Burns

I don't think I've ever drunk champagne before breakfast before. With breakfast on several occasions, but never before before. ~From the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961, screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novella by Truman Capote, spoken by the character Paul Varjak

In dog beers, I've only had one. ~Author Unknown

The fumes of wine fermented in my head; it was one of those moments of intoxication when all that ones sees and hears, speaks to one of the adored.... One would willingly embrace all who smile, and one feels that he is brother of all who live. ~Alfred de Musset, The Confession of a Child of the Century/La Confession d'un enfant du siècle, 1836, translated from French by Kendall Warren

Let me advise you, Madam, leave off your damn'd adulterated water, your tea, and take to wine. It will paint your face better than vermilion, and put more honesty in your heart than all the sermons you can read. ~Henry Fielding

A man ought not never to get drunk above the neck. ~Author Unknown

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. ~George Bernard Shaw

Now don't say you can't swear off drinking; it's easy, I've done it a thousand times. ~W.C. Fields

If life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. And try to find somebody who's life is giving them vodka, and have a party. ~Ron White

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober. ~William Butler Yeats

Wine is sunlight, held together by water. ~Galileo

If you wish to keep your affairs secret, drink no wine. ~Author Unknown

They speak of my drinking, but never think of my thirst. ~Scottish Proverb

Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin. ~P.G. Wodehouse

[H]uman feet are conspicuously absent from beer making. ~Steve Mirsky, "Ale's Well with the World," Scientific American, May 2007

Bacchus has drowned more men than Neptune. ~Giuseppe Garibaldi

A woman drove me to drink and I never even had the courtesy to thank her. ~W.C. Fields

I drink exactly as much as I want, and one drink more. ~H.L. Mencken

Zen martini: A martini with no vermouth at all. And no gin, either. ~P.J. O'Rourke

Beer is the cause and solution to all of life's problems. ~Homer Simpson

What is it about a beautiful sunny afternoon, with the birds singing and the wind rustling through the leaves, that makes you want to get drunk? ~Jack Handey

The drunk mind speaks the sober heart. ~Author Unknown

There are spunky little angels at the top of a bottle of wine and fearless little devils at the bottom. ~Terri Guillemets

Hefeweizen. Never drink something you can't spill. #Gewurztraminer ~Steve Miller, www.born-today.com/Choose_bDay.htm

I'm going to be around until the Atomic Energy Commission finds a safe place to bury my liver. ~Phil Harris

Know thyself, especially thyself after a couple of drinks. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. ~Seneca

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. ~Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: Some Confessions and Contradictions, 2010

Whoever takes just plain ginger ale soon gets drowned out of the conversation. ~Kin Hubbard

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 in to this vice. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity. ~Abraham Lincoln, address to the Washington Temperance Society, Springfield, Illinois, 22 February 1842

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. ~Dave Barry

I drink only to make my friends seem interesting. ~Don Marquis

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

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

What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine? ~Isak Dinesen

I'd prefer to have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy. ~Frank Nicholson, attributed

Why don't you slip out of those wet clothes and into a dry Martini? ~Robert Benchley

I don't get drunk, I get awesome. ~Author Unknown

Where ever I go, there I am. Drunk. ~Rita E. Torres

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

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

A drunken man is fitly named: he has drank, till he is drunken: the wine swallows his consciousness, and it sinks therein. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. ~Winston Churchill

Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied by drink. ~Mark Twain, Note-Book, 1935

Teetotalers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink. ~W.H. Davies

Brandy, n. A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan. ~Ambrose Bierce

Irish queer: a fellow who prefers women to drink. ~Seán Ó Faoláin

Take life with a grain of salt, a slice of lime, and a shot of tequila. ~Author Unknown

Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third. ~Knute Rockne

Candy is dandy

But liquor is quicker.

~Ogden Nash, Reflection on Ice-Breaking

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

Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion. ~Ovid

First waft, the landscape ahead flashes before me

First sip, I stumble gently over the threshold

Each sip, one more step into another world

Tentative steps, then bold, then giddy skipping along the path,

One more sip....

~Terri Guillemets, "Red Wine"

Life's a waste of time, time's a waste of life so let's all get wasted and have the time of our life. ~Author Unknown

Health — what my friends are always drinking to before they fall down. ~Phyllis Diller

[O]ne sip of this

Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight

Beyond the bliss of dreams.

~John Milton

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers. ~Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Satires

I quote my soul

I quote my heart

But sometimes I just quote the wine.

~Terri Guillemets

Everyone who drinks is not a poet. Some of us drink because we're not poets. ~From the movie Arthur

How come if alcohol kills millions of brain cells, it never killed the ones that made me want to drink? ~Author Unknown

      "What sleep!" I said. "Surely this man does not dream.... A thousand gnawing cares, a thousand mortal sorrows await his return to consciousness; nevertheless, this evening he had a piece of money in his pocket, he entered a tavern where he purchased oblivion....."

      And I... I do not sleep, I who have enough in my pocket at this moment to purchase sleep for a year; I am so proud and so foolish that I dare not enter a tavern, and I do not understand that if all unfortunates enter there, it is in order that they may come out happy. Oh! God! the juice of a grape crushed under the foot suffices to dissipate the deepest sorrow and to take all the invisible threads that the fates weave about our pathway. We weep like women, we suffer like martyrs; in our despair it seems that the world is crumbling under our feet and we sit down in our tears as did Adam at Eden's gate. And in order to cure our wound we have but to make a movement of the hand and moisten our throats. How pitiable our grief since it can be thus assuaged. We are surprised that Providence does not send angels to grant our prayers; it need not take the trouble, for it has seen our woes, it knows our desires, our pride and bitterness, the ocean of evil that surrounds us, and is content to hang a small black fruit along our paths.

      Thus, inspired by a fierce joy, I set out in quest of a tavern. As it was past midnight some were closed; that put me in a fury. "What!" I cried, "even that consolation is refused me!" I ran hither and thither knocking at the doors of taverns crying: "Wine! Wine!"

      At last I found one open; I called for a bottle and without caring whether it was good or bad I gulped it down; a second followed and then a third. I dosed myself as with medicine, and I forced the wine down as though it had been prescribed by a physician to save my life.

      The heavy fumes of the liquor, which was doubtless adulterated, mounted to my head. As I had gulped it down at a breath, drunkenness seized me promptly; I felt that I was becoming muddled, then I experienced a lucid moment, then confusion followed. Then consciousness left me, I leaned my elbows on the table and said adieu to myself. ~Alfred de Musset, The Confession of a Child of the Century/La Confession d'un enfant du siècle, 1836, translated from French by Kendall Warren

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

If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat — in other words, turn you into an adult. ~P.J. O'Rourke

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin

The first glass is a sedative, the second a psychologist, the third glass an excuse, and the fourth a lobotomy. ~Terri Guillemets

Never cry over spilt milk. It could've been whiskey. ~"Pappy" Maverick, in Maverick