Drunkenness

Wine is a Mocker by Jan Steen c. 1663

Drunkenness, also known as inebriation or alcohol intoxication, is a physiological state that occurs when a person has a high level of ethanol (alcohol) in their blood. Common symptoms of alcohol intoxication include slurred speech, euphoria, impaired balance, loss of muscle coordination (ataxia), flushed face, reddened eyes, reduced inhibition, and erratic behavior. In severe cases, it can cause coma or death.

Quotes

• Among Jews, there is an absence of drunkenness, always a fruitful source of domestic strife and misconduct.
  • Hermann Adler, quoted in Joseph H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (One-volume edition) p. 933

• God tells us men fucking men is a terrible thing, but a father offering his two daughters, vestal virgins no less, to a horde of horny buggers is heroic. Now that's straight. … God destroys the faggots with fire and brimstone. He turns a disobedient wife into salt. But he asks us to idolize drunks who sleep with their daughters or offer them to a horny, unruly mob.
  • Rabih Alameddine on the biblical narrative of Lot and his family confronting the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, as quoted by Wail S. Hassan in Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British Literature (2011), Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-979206-1, page 207.

• The use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage is as much an infatuation as is the smoking of opium by the Chinese, and the former is quite as destructive to the success of the business man as the latter.
  • P. T. Barnum, American showman. ‘Sundry Business Enterprises’, Ch XIV, The Life of P. T. Barnum (1855).

• It would not be too much to say that if all drinking of fermented liquors could be done away, crime of every kind would fall to a fourth of its present amount, and the whole tone of moral feeling in the lower order might be indefinitely raised.
  • Charles Buxton; reported to be in his pamphlet How to Stop Drunkenness in Grappling with the Monster[1] by T. S. Arthur.

• Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory—of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, vol. II (1823), # 38.

The most damaging forms of intemperance are connected with eating, strong drink, and sexual activities. Overindulgence in any of these is fatal to success. ~ Napoleon Hill

• No person may enjoy outstanding success without good health. Many of the causes of ill health are subject to mastery and control. These, in the main are: a. Overeating of foods not conducive to health. b. Wrong habits of thought... c. Wrong use of, and over indulgence in sex. d. Lack of proper physical exercise e. An inadequate supply of fresh air, due to improper breathing.... The most damaging forms of intemperance are connected with eating, strong drink, and sexual activities. Overindulgence in any of these is fatal to success...
  • Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1938)

• 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).

• Men intoxicated are sometimes stunned into sobriety.
  • Lord Mansfield, Rex v. Wilkes (1769), 4 Burr. Part IV. 2563; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 106, which notes: "This dictum of Lord Mansfield probably means that if a person is intoxicated by drink or by success or by anything which practically takes away sober reasoning, that anything which startles him will bring it back again. We see the same in ordinary life : any sudden surprise or shock will put a person in full possession of his senses. This seems the most correct interpretation of the dictum. Says Coke : "Homo potest esse hahilis et inhabilis diversis temporibus": A man may be capable and incapable at different times. —5 Co. 98".

• Qui peccat ebrius; luat sobrius.
  • Translated: "Let him who sins when drunk, be punished when sober".
  • Kendrick v. Hopkins (1580), Cary's Rep. 133; reported and translated in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 106.

• He that kyllyth a man drunk, sobur schal be' hangyd.
  • Reported as a common proverb in T. Starkey, "England in Reign of Henry VIII.," Bk. I., Ch. II. (S. Pole); reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 106, note 3.

• Tonight, may I get so drunk in love that
  I do not see any dreams!
  • Suman Pokhrel, May I Not See Dreams
    

• May my pain remain drunk singing its own love songs
  • Suman Pokhrel, Song of Soul
    

• It’s not my wish to walk intoxicated; to live for never is not my choice.
  • Suman Pokhrel, I'm in Oblivion

• Drunkenness, for example, is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.
  • Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1958), p. 23.

• The prohibition law, written for weaklings and derelicts, those who cannot control their appetites, has divided the nation, like Gaul, into three parts — wets, drys and hypocrites.
  • Florence Sabin (February 9, 1931), reported in Catholic World: Volume 133 (1931), p. 66.

• Wine is a ridiculer, alcohol is unruly; whoever goes astray by them is not wise.
  • Solomon, Proverbs 20:1

• Do not be among those who drink too much wine, among those who gorge themselves on meat, for a drunkard and a glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe one with rags.
  • Solomon, Proverbs 23:20, 21

• In the mid nineteenth century, the typical murderer was a drunken illiterate; a hundred years later the typical murderer regards himself as a thinking man.
  • Colin Wilson in The Encyclopedia of Modern Murder 1962-1983, Introductory Essay, p. xiv

• Men to whom wine had brought death long before lay by springs of wine and drank still, too stupefied to know their lives were past.
  • Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun, Vol II, Ch. 17: The Tale of the Student and his Son, Part 4.

See also

• Alcoholic beverages
• Alcoholism
• Consciousness
• Gluttony
• Incontinence
• Self control
• Self discipline
• Self-realization
• Temperance
• Vices
• Virtues