Beer & drinking quotes
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer."
Henry Lawson
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."
Homer Simpson in The Simpsons
"It's a deal."
Homer's brain
"There can't be good living where there is not good drinking."
Benjamin Franklin
"I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety."
William Shakespeare, King Henry V
"Life ain't all beer and skittles, and more's the pity."
George DuMaurier
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Homer Simson in The Simpsons
"The government will fall that raises the price of beer."
Czech saying
"Everybody's old enough for a beer, ain't that right, Mule?"
Jack Nicholson
"Religions change, beer and wine remain."
Harvey Allen (1889-1949)
"I think this would be a good time for a beer."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Fermentation may have been a greater discovery than fire."
David Rains Wallace
"Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer."
Frederick the Great
"It is disgusting to note the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects and the amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer."
Frederick the Great
"You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are."
Colonel Adolphus Busch
"We're wanted men, we'll strike again, but first let's have a beer."
Jimmy Buffett
"I work until beer o'clock."
Steven King
"Keep your libraries, your penal institutions, your insane asylums … give me beer. You think man needs rule, he needs beer. The world does not need morals, it needs beer. The souls of men have been fed with indigestibles, but the soul could make use of beer."
Henry Miller
"Beer is an improvement on water itself."
Grant Johnson
"Everyone needs something to believe in … and I believe I'll have another beer."
Steve Phelps
"I drink with impunity … or anyone else who invites me."
W.C. Fields
"Here's to a long life and a merry one, A quick death and an easy one, A pretty girl and a true one, A cold beer — and another one."
Lewis Henry
"Drink up and be somebody!"
The Green Jackets
"Beer glorious beer. Sing the praises of the first man to take barley and ferment the results now known as beer. Tip a cold pilsner to that unknown brewer. Give thanks to the beer god. I know not what course others may take but as for me … give me another beer!"
John Walentik
"I never drink beer before noon. Lucky for me, it is always after noon somewhere."
Anonymous
"And on the seventh day, God made beer."
Anonymous
"Everything I wanted to know about life I learned from beer."
Anonymous
"You don't like jail? Naw, they got the wrong kind of bars in there."
Charles Bukowski
"If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose."
Jack Handy
"One more drink and I'd be under the host."
Dorothy Parker
"The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind."
Humphrey Bogart
"A drink a day keeps the shrink away."
Edward Abbey
"With heigh! The sweet birds, O how they sing! Doth set my pugging tooth on edge. For a quart of ale is a dish for a king."
William Shakespeare
"Give me a woman who truly loves beer and I will conquer the world."
Kaiser Wilhelm
"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
"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
Ernest Hemingway
"When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!"
Brian O'Rourke
"Blessed is a mother who gives birth to a brewer."
Enscription at the U Fleku brewery in Prague, Czech Republic
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"There is nothing worse than a closed pub."
Judy Ashworth, Californian alehouse pioneer
"There is nothing worse than an empty homebrew bottle."
Keith Kayler-Thomson, homebrew shop proprietor, Geelong, Victoria, Australia
"While beer brings gladness, don't forget that water only makes you wet."
Harry Leon Wilson
"No solider can properly fight unless he is properly fed on beef and beer."
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough
"Beer that is not drunk has missed its vocation."
Meyer Breslau 1880
"For any country to be a country you have to have an air force, a football team and a beer. You can get by without the air force and the football team but you have to have the beer."
Frank Zappa
"He who has not been at a tavern knows not what a paradise it is."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"If you can boil water, you can brew beer."
Homebrewers' saying
"I recommend bread, meat, vegetables and beer."
Sophocles
"From man's sweat and God's love beer came into this world."
Saint Arnold of Metz, the patron saint of brewers
"Give a man a beer and he'll waste an hour. Teach a man to brew and he'll waste a lifetime."
Homebrewers' saying
"Our liver is happy, our heart is joyful. May Ninkasi live together with you."
From Hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian beer goddess (1800BC)
"Some of my best friends are beers."
Beer-lovers' saying
"If God had wanted us to filter our beer, he wouldn't have given us livers."
Larry Bell, Kalamazoo Brewing Company, Kalamazoo, Michigan, US
"Another one of them new worlds. No beer, no women, no pool parlors, no nothin' ."
Earli Holliman in Forbidden Planet (1956)
"They who drink beer will think beer."
Washington Irving
"I'm allergic to grass. Hey, it would be worse; I could be allergic to beer."
Golfer Greg Norman
"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
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy."
Benjamin Franklin
"It was as natural as eating, and to me as necessary, and I would not have thought of eating a meal without drinking … beer."
Ernest Hemingway
"Whoever makes poor beer is transferred to the dung hill."
City bylaw, Danzig (now Gdansk), Poland (1000)
"Good beer makes its own friends."
Charles Jerome Koch, brewer and great-grandfather of the founder of Samuel Adams Brewery
"In the barley where thou sleepest
there hides a nectar clear
Which men shall know in later times
as porter, ale or beer."
Anonymous
"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
Henny Youngman
"He is a wise man who invented beer."
Plato
"Most people hate the taste of beer — to begin with. It is, however, a prejudice that many people have been able to overcome."
Winston Churchill
"Filled with mingled cream and amber I will drain this glass again. Such hilarious visions clamber through the chambers of my brain — quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies come to life and fade away. What care I how time advances? I am drinking Ale today."
Edgar Allan Poe, Lineson Ale
"Time is never wasted when you're wasted all the time."
Catherine Zandonella
"Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure."
Ambrose Bierce
"Reality is an illusion that occurs due to the lack of alcohol."
Anonymous
"I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast."
W.C. Fields
"A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her."
W.C. Fields
"What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?."
W.C. Fields
"Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink."
Lady Astor to Winston Churchill
"Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."
Churchill in reply
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
Oscar Wilde
"Life is a waste of time, time is a waste of life, so get wasted all of the time and have the time of your life."
Anonymous
"Whiskey? That'd be too warm; it gets your blood up. Porter's the very thing."
Harry Tyler in the 1952 film The Quiet Man
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy."
Tom Waits
"After beer and women, bananas are nature's most nearly perfect food."
D. Kimes
"When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer."
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."
Dave Barry
"Adhere to Schweinheitsgebot. Don't put anything in your beer that a pig wouldn't eat."
David Geary
"Why is American beer served cold? So you can tell it from urine."
David Moulton
"People who drink light 'beer' don't like the taste of beer; they just like to pee a lot."
Capital Brewery, Middleton, Wisconsin
"Put it back in the horse!"
H. Allen Smith, an American humorist in the '30s-'50s, after he drank his first American beer at a bar
"Twenty-four hours in a day, twenty-four beers in a case: Coincidence?"
Anonymous
"Nunc est bibendum" — "Now is the time for drinking."
Latin saying
"There are some times when I reflect back on all the beer I drink (and) 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 Handy
"The more you drink, the more you save."
Geoff Ambrose on the economies of homebrewing
"Drinking too much is bad for you, but not drinking at all is even worse."
Russian saying
"Homer no function beer well without."
Homer Simpson
"This beer is good for you. This is draft beer. Stick with the beer. Let's go and beat this guy up and come back and drink some more beer."
Ernest Hemingway
"I am not an alcoholic. I am a drunk. We don't have to go to meetings."
Anonymous
"Damn, there's beer on my job application."
Brian Tully
"A mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer."
Ancient Egyptian wisdom, 2200 BC
"My problem with most athletic challenges is training. I'm lazy and find that workouts cut into my drinking time."
A Wolverine is Eating My Leg
"The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober."
William Butler Yeats
"Beer. It's not just for breakfast anymore."
Anonymous
"Beer. If you can't taste it, why bother!"
Some anonymous legend
"Beer: Nature's laxative."
Anonymous
"All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow."
Dave Barry, presumably on US beer
"Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."
Winston Churchill
"I drink to make other people interesting."
George Jean Nathan
"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on."
Dean Martin
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut"
Ernest Hemingway
"Beauty is in the hands of the beer holder."
Anonymous
"We will have no more of innkeeping. I have been sick and tired of it this many a day and care not now to see men abuse good liquor and addle their silly pates to fill my purse."
J.M. Falkner
"Hangovers, while being pushed into the background by the drink, were also being fuelled. They were now so potentially big as to be genuinely feared. They would not stop drinking until they had to face the music, and that was when every bit of adrenalin had been burned away."
Irving Welsh, Trainspotting
"You know what alcoholics call New Year's Eve? Amateur night."
Elmore Leonard
"Remember 'i' before 'e', except in Budweiser."
Unknown
"To some it's a six-pack, to me it's a support group."
Anonymous
"Most men can at least recognize some beauty when drunk."
Anonymous
"Friends don't let friends drink light beer."
Anonymous
"Draft beer, not people."
Anonymous
"Drunk is feeling sophisticated when you can't say it."
Anonymous
"No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness — or as good as drink."
G.K. Chesterton
"Conserve water. Drink Beer."
Anonymous
"Beer is good food."
Anonymous
"It's better to have beer in hand than gas in tank."
Anonymous
"Life is too short to drink cheap beer."
Anonymous
"If nothing beats a Bud, given the choice, I'd take the nothing …"
Anonymous
"What do making love in a canoe and American beer have in common? They're both f@#!*ing close to water."
Anonymous
"Sir, you're drunk!"
Lady Astor to Winston Churchill
"Yes, Madam, I am. But in the morning, I will be sober and you will still be ugly."
Sir Winston in reply
"Beer has food value but food has no beer value."
Anonymous
"Whoever called it near beer was a poor judge of distance."
Prohibition saying
"I do not drink more than a sponge."
Rabelais, 17th-century French satirist
"I decided to stop drinking with creeps. I decided to drink only with friends. I've lost 30 pounds."
Ernest Hemingway
"There are more old drunks than there are old doctors."
Willie Nelson
"Life, alas, is very drear. Up with the glass! Down with the beer!"
Louis Untermeyer (1885-1977)
"Wine is but single broth, ale is meat, drink, and cloth."
16th century English proverb.
"Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love and celebrate the good days."
Ancient Egyptian saying
"But if at church they would give some ale
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale
We'd sing and we'd pray all the live long day,
Nor ever once from the church to stray."
William Blake
"We brewers don't make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself."
Anchor Brewing president Fritz Maytag
"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 be learning about beer."
Friar Tuck, Robin Hood (the 1991 movie)
"In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer."
A.J.P. Taylor, British historian
"What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?"
Sydney Smith, English clergyman and writer.
"Ah, beer, my one weakness. My Achille's heel, if you will."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Ah, the college roadtrip. What better way to spread beer-fueled mayhem?"
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Bart, a woman is like beer. They look good, they smell good and you'd step over your own mother just to get one!"
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Does whisky count as beer?"
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"But every time I learn something new, it pushes out something old! Remember that time I took a home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?"
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"That's because you were drunk!"
Marge Simpson in reply
"Barney … you have to be sober to fly a helicopter. It's not like driving a car."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Note to self … no matter how bad life gets, there is always beer."
Norm MacDonald
"It's a menage a trios: you and me and Heineken."
Bloodhound Gang
"Now, thats just drunk talk! Sweeeeet drunk talk."
Barney, The Simpsons
"…and we decided that from that day forward we would never drink beer again. And we never did."
Homer while drinking a beer and reminiscing about him and Barney in high school, The Simpsons
"Marge, beer me."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"We're all out of beer Homey."
Marge Simpson
"Don't toy with me woman."
"I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion."
Miguel De Cervantes
"I'm Catholic and I can't commit suicide, but I plan to drink myself to death."
Jack Kerouac
"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."
Tom T. Hall
"There may be a few good men who don't drink, but they've got to prove it."
Colonel Lincoln Karmany, United States Marine Corps
"Don't you know alcohol kills brain cells … any damn brain cell that can't live through a good drunk deserves to die. You're doing yourself a favor, getting rid of all them nonhacking, underachieving ones. I'm working on improving your efficiency."
James Webb, A Country Such As This
"Beer — Because one doesn't solve the world's problems over white wine."
Anonymous
"The end is near, drink more beer."
G.J. Hajic
"I don't trust anyone that doesn't drink."
G.J. Hajic
"I only go to air shows because they have beer"
Q. Hajic
"A full beer is a perfect beer."
Tim Russman
"Well I woke up this mornin' and I got myself a beer."
Jim Morrison, of The Doors, Roadhouse Blues
"It takes beer to make thirst worthwhile."
German Proverb
"The best way to die is sit under a tree, eat lots of bologna and salami, drink a case of beer, then blow up."
Art Donovan, aka Fatso, Baltimore Colts linesman in the 1950s & '60s, on the Tonight Show, April 13, 1990
"I have reached this grave out of my own possession, without taking anything away from anyone. Every man who worked for me was paid. They did it for beer and bread."
Enscryption on ancient Egyptian tomb
"Beer may cause you to digress — and lead a happier life. "
Michael Jackson, the Beer Hunter
"And what dost thou drink? I drink beer if I have it or water if I have not."
Archbishop Alfric's Vocabulary, 995 AD
"The question of drink arose, as it will in the world of art, but the presence of poverty cast a bleak light on the scene. There was, however, this five-gallon jug of raw, unaged homebrew in the kitchen. Of course, it was a crude drink and might produce beastly, undesired effects, but … well … "
Hunter S. Thompson, When Beatnicks Were Social Lions
"There must be more beer, cheaper beer, better beer! People who do not drink beer do not realise that beer is as important to the working classes as bread … Men who find they cannot get beer tend to develop a taste for less-innocent liqours. Good ale and good beer are drinks for the temperate men, and it must be confessed that England has bred a race of mighty fighting men on her national brew. Good beer is the basis of true temperance."
Daily Express (Tell us if you know which one), January 25, 1919
"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."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"The selling of bad beer is a crime against Christian love. "
13th-century law, City of Augsburg
"There is more to life than beer alone, but beer makes those other things even better."
Stephen Morris, The Great Beer Trek
"Nothing ever tasted better than a cold beer on a beautiful afternoon with nothing to look forward to than more of the same."
Hugh Hood
"Ah, good old trustworthy beer. My love for you will never die."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Why we are here:
To tremble at the terrible beauty of the stars,
To shed a tear at the perfection of Beethoven's symphonies, and
To crack a cold one now and then."
US television host David Letterman
"It only takes one drink to get me drunk. The problem is I can never remember if it is the 12th or 13th."
George Burns
"Englishmen are like their own beer: Frothy on top, dregs on the bottom, the middle excellent."
Voltaire
"Great beer bellies are made, not born."
Anonymous
"Drinking is bad taste but tastes good."
Franklin P. Adams
"For we could not now take time for further search or consideration: our victuals being much spent, especially our beere."
From the diary of a pilgrim before deciding to land at Plymouth Rock in the US
"Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health."
Thomas Jefferson
"Okay, the last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer."
Matt LeBlanc in Lost in Space
"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."
Dave Barry
"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."
Stephen Beaumont in World of Beer
" If you can make oatmeal cookies at home, you can brew beer."
Bob Carbone, homebrewer and homebrew judge
"Give my people plenty of beer, good beer, and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them."
Queen Victoria
"In vino veritas, in cervesio felicitas"
(In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is joy.)
Latin saying
"There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking."
Samuel Johnson
" I've always believed that paradise will have my favorite beer on tap."
Rudyard Wheatley
"The only advantage of having lived through the Age of Prohibition is that any liquor tastes good."
Don Marquis, American journalist, 1878-1937
"Ale sellers should not be tale tellers."
Scottish proverb
"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."
George Borrow, Lavengro, 1851
"Don't drink and drive, you might spill your beer!"
Anonymous
"God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"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."
Samuel Johnson
"Here sleep 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 on a soldier's grave
"If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs."
David Daye
"Of all the endeavors pursued by mankind, surely none could be deemed more commendable than the creation of a better beer."
Cooper's Brewery homebrew ad
"Not drunk is he who from the floor
Can rise alone to drink some more.
But drunk is he, who prostrate lies
Without the power to drink or rise."
Andrew Peacock
"If you can see light through your beer, its not good beer."
Anonymous
"Let no man thirst for good beer."
Sam Adams
"Beer is the reason we get up each afternoon."
Ray McNeill
"In Belgium, the magistrate has the dignity of a prince, but by Bacchus, it is true that the brewer is king."
Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916), Flemish writer
"Beer will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no beer."
Freddie Freak
"Michael Jackson? His name's not familiar to me. Who's he with?"
Frank Hamsher, Anheuser-Busch, on the Beer Hunter
"Last beer before dry county. Coldest beer in town."
Scary sign in southern United States
"Drink to me."
Dying words of Pablo Picasso
"Cover a war in a place where you can't drink beer or talk to a woman? Hell no!"
Hunter S. Thompson on the US war against Iraq
"The true enthusiast is probably happiest drinking from an opaque container. It does not allow him to see the small imperfections in the appearance of the beer."
Joy of Cooking
"Of beer, an enthusiast said that it could never be bad, but that some brands might be better than others."
A.A. Milne
"Two of the more dubious achievements of American culture are white bread and light beer."
Real Beer and Good Eats, Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly
"It is well known that a horse will eagerly drink up a pint of red wine, and that dogs love beer. "
E.B. Foote, 1902
"I would rather commit adultery than drink a glass of beer."
Social reformer Lady Astor's final word at a temperance lecture
"Who wouldn't?"
A wag in the crowd
"I like a good beer. Of course, I'll drink a bad one too."
Anonymous
"Let no person thirst for lack of real ale."
Anonymous
"Thank god for long-necked bottles, the angel's remedy."
Tom Petty
"Old Milwaukee. Consistently one of the worst beers in America. The city of Milwaukee should sue to have the name changed to 'Old Fargo, North Dakota'. Don't even buy it on sale."
The Great Beer Trek, Stephen Morris (but surely it's not worst than Budweiser)
"A well-lubricated populace being necessary to the humor of a free state, the right of the people to brew and drink beer shall not be infringed."
Anonynous
"Light beer is an invention of the Prince of Darkness."
British television cop Inspector Morse
"Beer brewers shall sell no beer to the citizens, unless it be three weeks old; to the foreigner they may knowingly sell younger beer."
German Beer Law, 1466
"Beer once tasted like something. It was made out of malt and hops and yeast and pure filtered water. Nowadays it is often made of such gook as rice and corn grits … nothing but dirty water. It's so light and clear it's nothing … ignoble swill."
Charles McCabe, 1960
"There is an ancient Celtic axiom that says 'good people drink good beer'. Which is true, then as now. Just look around you in any public bar room and you will quickly see: Bad people drink bad beer. Think about it."
Hunter S. Thompson
"I prefer both my beer and my coffee to be dark and bitter; that way, they fit in so well with the rest of my life."
Anonymous
"Life is too short to worry about what others think of my brew."
Anonymous
"As he brews, so shall he drink."
Ben Jonson
"Blessings of your heart, you brew good ale."
Two Gentlemen of Verona, William Shakespeare
"Beer does not make itself properly by itself. It takes an element of mystery and of things that no one can understand. As a brewer you concern yourself with all the stuff you can understand, everywhere."
Anchor Brewing president Fritz Maytag
"An honest brew makes its own friends."
Anonymous
"All we are saying is give yeast a chance."
Anonymous
"Well they worked their will on John Barleycorn, but he lived to tell the tale. For they pour him out of an old brown jug, and they call him home brewed ale!"
The song John Barleycorn, traditional or by H. Gorson (1607-1641)
"One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time."
Lady Nancy Astor
"Alcohol is an excuse for people to act like assholes."
Frank Zappa
"Just as it is shameful to be drunk among the sober, so is it shameful to be sober among the drunk."
Anonymous
"Drunkenness is simply voluntary insanity."
Seneca
"To dispute with a drunkard is to debate with an empty house."
Publilius Syrus
"Extensive interviews show that not one alcoholic has ever actually seen a pink elephant."
Yale University, Center of Alcohol Studies
"Being drunk is like being in love. If you've never been in love, you don't know what you're missing. "
Anonymous
"When a man is forced by circumstance to drink water, you might have the common decency to turn away."
Private Smalley, Last Stand at Feather River
"A person can work up a mean, mean thirst after a hard day of nothin' much at all."
The Replacements
"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."
W.C. Fields
"Beer: both the essence and the symbol of a good life"
R. Netting
"The present custom of drinking alcohol to excess … will continue."
Marcus Clarke, The Future Australian Race, 1878
"Oh no! What have I done? I smashed open my little boy's piggy bank, and for what? A few measly cents, not even enough to buy one beer. Wait a minute, lemme count and make sure … not even close."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
" And another thing, your beer tastes like piss."
Tourist girl, Desperado
"We know. We piss in it."
Bartender
"Before, when I'd go to a pub, people would want to fight me just because I was a dancer. Now they want to buy me a beer and tell me they're proud I'm Australian"
Paul Mercurio, who found fame in the movie Strictly Ballroom
"When you own a micro-brewery, you always have fluidity."
Ken Rich
"Two hands and only one mouth. Now that's a drinking problem."
Anonymous
"(Brewing:) the fine art of transforming a bucket of boiling sludge into cold bottles of alcoholic sludge."
W.D. Brewmeister (?), 1882
"Nine out of 10 alcoholics recommend beer."
Blackboard at The George Hotel, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia (thanks to Jonathan Bertram)
"If wine is Yoga for the soul, beer must be sex for the mouth."
Blackboard at The George Hotel, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia (thanks to Jonathan Bertram)
"The church is near, but the road is icy. The bar is far away, but I will walk carefully."
Russian proverb
"Back and side go bare, go bare,
Both foot and hand go cold;
But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old."
Bishop Still (John)
"For a quart of Ale is a dish for a King."
A Winter's Tale, William Shakespeare
"They who drink beer will think beer."
Washington Irving
"Drunkenness … is temporary suicide."
Bertrand Russell
"I often sit back and think, 'I wish I'd done that', and find out later that I already have."
Richard Harris
"Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication."
Lord Byron
"Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think."
A.E. Housman
"It is not I who become addicted, it is my body."
Jean Cocteau
"All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation."
W.H. Auden
"O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsopp, Bass!
Names that should be on every infant's tongue."
C.V. Calverley
" 'Did you ever taste beer?'
'I had a sip of it once,' said the small servant.
'Here's a state of things!' cried Mr Swiveller …
'She never tasted it — it can't be tasted in a sip!' "
Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
"Oh moonshine, oh moonshine
Oh how I love thee
You killed me dear father
But dare you kill me
I'll eat when I'm hungry
I'll drink when I'm dry
And if moonshine don't kill me I'll live till I die."
Anonymous
"Doth it not show viley in me to desire small beer?"
Henry IV, William Shakespeare
"When people drink, then they are successful and win lawsuits are are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of cider, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever."
Aristophanes, 424BC
"Lo! the poor topper 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."
George Crabbe
"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 up again."
A.E. Housman
"Give an Irishman lager for a month and he's a dead man. An Irishman's stomach is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him."
Mark Twain
"You foam within our glasses, you lusty golden brew, whoever imbibes takes fire from you. The young and the old sing your praises; here's to beer, here's to cheer, here's to beer."
A toast in The Bartered Bride, Bedrich Smetana's 1866 opera
"If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink:
Good beer — a friend — or being dry —
Or lest we should be by and by —
Or any other reason why."
Henry Aldrich
"I don't drink water, fish f--- in it."
Oscar Wilde
"Being half drunk is just another way of saying you're almost there."
Jarrod Conway, Brisbane, Australia
"Now son, you don't want to drink beer. That's for Daddies, and kids with fake IDs."
Homer Simpson
"We're making the world a better place to drink, one beer at a time."
Joe Gural
"Cold War bad. Cold beer good."
Anonymous
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria."
Anonymous
"I don't have a drinking problem so much as I have a drinking solution."
Anonymous
"The blood is now running through my alcohol stream."
Anonymous
"Some people see the glass half empty. Some people see the glass half full. I say it's beer man, just drink it!"
Anonymous
"There's nothing like a cold beer on a hot Christmas morning."
Homer Simpson
"Why is it that when you drink seven nights a week in college you are a partier, and after that you are an alcoholic?"
Anonymous
"Beer is good; drink it."
Anonymous
"There are many good reasons for drinking. One has just entered my head: if a man doesn't drink when he's living, how the hell can he drink when he's dead?"
Anonymous
"A wise man once said 'Never mix beer and hard liquor … unless you've only got one glass.' "
Anonymous
"There are those who drink and those who pound, and those who don't are bound to frown."
Anonymous
"No matter what you say or what you do, always cheer your frosty brew!"
Anonymous
"My advice to you is to start drinking, heavily."
John Belushi in Animal House
"Beer is the fountain of happiness
we should not question it's power
but blindly frolic in its foamy ways."
A drinking song, William Butler Yeats
"Trinken ist nicht die Antwort, aber beim Trinken vergisst man die Frage."
("Drinking is not the answer, but by drinking, you forget the question.")
German saying (?)
"The only thing worse than having to wait for a Bud is not having to wait for a Bud"
Geoff Ambrose
"If ya cant see through it dont drink it !"
Sloppy (Neil), a visitor to our site
"I distrust camels and anyone else who can go a week without drinking."
Joe E. Lewis
"Beer is yummy
In my tummy
I like beer
It's good gear"
Cameron Joyce
"What'd you like Normie?"
Sam, Cheers
"A reason to live. Give me another beer."
Norm
"What'll you have Normie?"
Sam, Cheers
"Well, I'm in a gambling mood Sammy. I'll take a glass of whatever comes out of that tap."
Norm
"Looks like beer, Norm."
"Call me Mister Lucky."
"Hey, Mr Peterson, there's a cold one waiting for you."
Woody, Cheers
"I know. If she calls, I'm not here."
Norm
"Beer, Norm?"
Sam, Cheers
"Have I gotten that predictable? Good."
Norm
"What's the story Norm?"
Sam, Cheers
"Boy meets beer, boy drinks beer, boy meets another beer."
Norm
"Can I pour you a beer, Mr Peterson?"
Woody, Cheers
"A little early isn't it, Woody?"
Norm
"For a beer?"
"No, for stupid questions."
"If you haven't got at least 12 different beers in your fridge, well, it's just not a beer fridge, is it?"
Wade Routledge, Fremantle, Australia, 2001
"The other day I was so desperate for a beer, I snuck into the football stadium and ate the dirt under the bleachers."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Thanks for coming to my party. Wow, you brought a whole beer keg!
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
"Yeah. Where can I fill it up?"
Barney in reply
"If you can't drink tomorrow night, there is no reason to drink slow tonight!"
Anonymous
"If beer is liquid bread, then Guinness is liquid cake."
Naveen Kumar
"I find that if I drive slower, we use less petrol, the money we save can go into beer and the whole trip will be more pleasant."
"Clackers" Clarke, on a bush track to the opal fields at Mintabie, South Australia.
"There is an excuse for drinking light beer — sometimes — but there's never an excuse for drinking shit beer."
Geoff Ambrose
"Beer speaks. People mumble."
Anonymous
"The liver is evil. It must be punished."
Anonymous
"And Friday was Pay Day, and along with it came beer."
Rudyard Kippling
"Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water."
W.C. Fields
"'I'll stick with gin. Champagne is just ginger ale that knows somebody."
Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."
George Best, late soccer player
"Milk is for babies. Real men drink beer."
Arnold Schwarzenegger
"I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex and rich food. He was healthy, right up to the day he killed himself"
Johnny Carson
"A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow man."
Charles Baudelaire, French poet
Got a quote? Why not send it to us?
"Thirst knows no season."
James Hamlyn, of the Buckleboo Football Club, South Australia,
after someone suggested during a committee meeting that fewer
kegs should be ordered for an upcoming show because it was winter.
"The Christian religion, then, is not an affair of preaching, or prating, or ranting, but of taking care of the bodies as well as the souls of people; not an affair of belief and of faith and of professions, but an affair of doing good, and especially to those who are in want; not an affair of fire and brimstone, but an affair of bacon and bread, beer and a bed."
William Cobbett, Rural Rides (1830)
