Quotations about Alcohol

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. ~Thomas 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



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


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 drunkeness - 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


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


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


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


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


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


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


Hefeweizen. Never drink something you can't spill. ~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


Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. ~Seneca


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


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


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


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


Teetotallers 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


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


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


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


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


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


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