Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day c...atch you unexpectedly, like a trap.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 philtre, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness after...wards, it would be moral to get drunk.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Remember, that when I speak of pleasures I always mean the elegant pleasures of a rational being, and not the brutal ones of a swi...ne. I mean la bonne chère, short of gluttony; wine, infinitely short of drunkenness; play, without the least gaming; and gallantry, without debauchery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name.... You must ...allow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scraps, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at lea...st, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"A man," said Oliver Cromwell, "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use of ...opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »