Brew for thought

If music be the food of love, beer must be the fuel of the soul—at least if you ask the host of brew-lovers gathered here.

 

“Twenty-four hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?”
—Stephen Wright, comedian

“Here’s to alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all life’s problems.”
—Homer Simpson, father

“The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.”
—Humphrey Bogart, actor

“A woman drove me to drink and I didn’t even have the decency to thank her.”
—W. C. Fields, comedian

“I drink to make other people interesting.”
—George Jean Nathan, drama critic

“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
—Henny Youngman, comedian

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
—Oscar Wilde, writer

“Sir, you are drunk.” —Bessie Braddock, politician
“Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.” —Winston Churchill, prime minister

“Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”
—Winston Churchill

“For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher

“An alcoholic is someone who you do not like who drinks as much as you do.”
—Dylan Thomas, poet

“Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.”
—Frank Sinatra, singer

“Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.”
—Aristophanes, playwright

“He was a wise man who invented beer.”
—Plato, phillosopher

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts – and beer.”
—Abraham Lincoln, president

“I’m not a heavy drinker, I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.”
—Noel Coward, playwright

“Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.”
—George Bernard Shaw, playwright

“I don’t like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there”
—Charles Bukowski, writer

“I love beer, and, by that very fact, the world.”
—Thomas Merton, Trappist monk

“It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, writer

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.”
—George Carlin, comedian

“Drink today, and drown all sorrow; You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow; Best, while you have it, use your breath; There is no drinking after death.”
—Ben Jonson, writer

“Man being reasonable must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication;
Glory, the grape, love, gold – in these are sunk
The hopes of all men and of every nation.”
—Lord Byron, poet

“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, comedian

“Filled with mingled cream and amber
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chambers of my brain –
Quaintest thoughts – queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
Who cares how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, writer

“Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.”
—A. E. Housman, poet

“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
—Ernest Hemingway, writer

“No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness – or as good as drink.”
—G. K. Chesterton, writer

“Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.”
—Ambrose Bierce, journalist

“Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.”
—Charles Bukowski, writer

“If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.”
—Dean Martin, singer