Quotes 

Great Thoughts on Beer: quotes for the Beer Drinker

(last updated 20 January 2007)

 

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.
          --Edward Abbey

"Six pints of bitter. And quickly please, the world's about to end."
          -- Douglas Adams: The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy - spoken by Ford Prefect

An honest man, that is not quite sober, has nothing to fear.
          -- Joseph Addison

To be bowed by grief is folly;
Naught is gained by melancholy;
Better than the pain of thinking,
Is to steep the sense in drinking.
          -- Alcaeus

Religions change; beer and wine remain.
          --Hervey Allen

Why does Coors Light exist?  Are there actually people in this world for whom the hearty, bold taste of regular Coors is too much?
          --Steve Altes

"Ale it is called among men, and among gods, beer."
          -- Alvisimal (Old Norse - 1st known mention of "ale", ca950 CE)

"The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer."
          --Ancient Egyptian saying, 2200 B.C

"Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and to celebrate the good days."
          --Ancient Egyptian saying

"I fear the man who drinks water and so remembers this morning what the rest of us said last night."
          --Ancient Greek Proverb

May Ninkasi live with you
Let her pour your beer everlasting."
          --Ancient Sumerian blessing

Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk.
          -- Poul Anderson

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

They who get drunk on other intoxicating liquors fall on all parts of their body; they fall on the left side, on the right side, on their faces, and on their backs. But it is only those who get drunk on beer who fall on their backs and lie with their face upwards.
          --Aristotle

Here with my beer I sit, while golden moments flit:
alas! They pass unheeded by: and as they fly,
I, Being dry,
Sit, idly sipping here,
My beer.
          -- George Arnold

But leave me to my beer!
Gold is dross, love is loss,
so if I gulp my sorrows down, or see them drown
in foamy draughts of old nut-brown, then I do wear the crown,
without the cross!
          -- George Arnold

From man's sweat and God's love, beer came into the world.
          -- St Arnoldus

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.
          --David Auerbach

I am sure of this, that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would be not half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all.
          -- Jane Austen

You're all wanking sissies if you even think about using a grain mill, teeth, or ball-peen hammer. A real brewer uses 17 vestal virgins stomping on the grain in a large wooden vat. And yeast is for losers. True brewers just dip one end of their dog into the wort to get things going.
          -- Drew Avis

What may seem depressing or even tragic to one person may seem like an absolute scream to another person, especially if he has had between four and seven beers.
          -- 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

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

All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow.
          --Dave Barry

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, Postpetroleum Guzzler

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

Recently I began to feel this void in my life, even after meals, and I said to myself, "Dave, all you do with your spare time is sit around and drink beer. You need a hobby." So I got a hobby. I make beer.
          --Dave Barry

Or merry swains, who quaff the nut-brown ale, and sing enamoured of the nut-brown maid.
          -- James Beatty

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and the old men and women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
          --Brendan Behan

To get enough to eat was regarded as an achievement. To get drunk was a victory.
          --Brendan Behan

The Tipple's aboard and the night is young,
The door's ajar and the Barrel is sprung,
I am singing the best song ever was sung
And it has a rousing chorus.
          -- Hillaire Belloc

Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony.
          --Robert Benchley

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.
          -- Robert Benchley

Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.
          -- The Bible: Proverbs, Chapter 31 verses 6 and 7

Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
          -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
          --Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation.
          --William Blake

Sheriff Bart: "A man that drinks like that and don't eat is going to die."
Waco Kid: "....When?"
          --Blazing Saddles

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
          --Humphrey Bogart

A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it's better to be thoroughly sure.
          -- Bohemian proverb

Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living.
          -- James Boswell

Beer that is not drunk has missed its vocation.
          -- Meyer Breslau

We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
          --Charles Bukowski

Pretty women make us buy beer. Ugly women make us drink beer.
          --Al Bundy (character from "Married with Children")

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
          -- Edmund Burke

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

One evening in October, when I was one-third sober,
An' taking home a "load" with manly pride,
My poor feet began to stutter, so I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came up an' lay down by my side.
Then we sang "It's all fair weather when good fellows get together,"
Till a lady passing by was heard to say:
"You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses."
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
          -- Benjamin Hapgood Burt

I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.
          --Richard Burton

My problem with most athletic challenges is training. I'm lazy and find that workouts cut into my drinking time.
          --Tim Cahill, A Wolverine is Eating My Leg

Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.
          --Jimmy Cannon

People who drink light beer don't like the taste of beer; they just like to pee alot.
          --Capital Brewery, Middleton, WI

Beer is not a good cocktail-party drink, especially in a home where you don't know where the bathroom is.
          -- Billy Carter

Yes, sir. I'm a real Southern boy. I got a red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.
          -- Billy Carter

Paintings are like a beer, only beer tastes good and it's hard to stop drinking beer.
          -- Billy Carter

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

St. George he was for England,
And before he killed the dragon
He drank a pint of English ale
          -- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
          -- Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

Make sure that the beer — four pints a week — goes to the troops under fire before any of the parties in the rear get a drop.
          --Winston Churchill

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

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.
          --His reply

There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
          -- John Ciardi

Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.
          -- John Ciardi

I've seen, I say, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer.
          -- Senator Claghorn

A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet, but half a sentence is too much when there is no meeting of minds.
          --Chinese proverb

It is my design to die in the brew-house; let ale be placed to my mouth when I am expiring, that when the choirs of angels come, they may say, 'Be God propitious to this drinker.'
          -- St Columbanus

When the bee comes to your house, let her have beer; you may want to visit the bee's house some day.
          --Congoese Proverb

Judge:   You are charged with habitual drunkenness. Have you anything to say in your defense?
Defendant:   Habitual thirstiness?
          -- Courtroom dialogue

I'm not a heavy drinker, I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.
          -- Noel Coward

I like a good beer buzz early in the morning.
          --Sheryl Crow, "All I Wanna Do"

The roots and herbs beaten and put into new ale or beer and daily drunk, cleareth, strengthen and quicken the sight of the eyes.
          --Nicholas Culpeper

A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it's better to be thoroughly sure.
          --Czech Proverb

Blessed is the mother who gives birth to a brewer.
          --Czech Proverb

If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs.
          --David Daye

Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at all seasons, madam: that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals.
          -- Pierre de Beaumarchais

I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.
          --Miguel de Cervantes

Be temperate in your drinking, remembering that too much wine cannot keep either a secret or a promise.
          --Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 2, Chapter XLIII

Drink moderately, for drunkeness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.
          -- Miguel de Cervantes

...I had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon, and that was to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and then try to brew myself some beer.
         -- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

The intoxication of the faro drinker only shows itself at first by an increase in noise which is only deafening, and finally by a silent deterioration of the mind.
         -- Gerard de Nerval (faro is a form of Belgian beer: weak lambic sweetened with sugar)

Who comes here?
A grenadier.
What does he want?
A pot of beer.
          -- Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend book 2, chapter 2

"Did you ever taste beer?"
"I had a sip of it once.," said the servant.
"Here's a state of things!"! cried Mr. Swiveller ....
"She never tasted it — it can't be tasted in a sip!"
          -- Charles Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop

There is moderation even in excess.
          -- Disraeli

You know, nobody eats in England. Three or four pints of English beer a night fills you. I can't say I'm very impressed with the food in America. it's all sort of bland. Like turkey sandwiches.
          -- Anne Dudley

There is wan thing an' on'y wan thing to be said in favor iv drink, an' that is that it has caused manny a lady to be loved that otherwise might've died single.
          -- Finley Peter Dunne

Alcohol is necessary for a man so that now and then he can have a good opinion of himself undisturbed by the facts.
          --Finley Peter Dunne

Froth is not beer.
          --Dutch Proverb

This is all thousands of years old. It’s the same the world over. Anyone who has ever walked upright has loved beer, celebrated over it, told talks over it, hatched plots over it, courted over it. It’s what we do as a species. It’s what makes us human. We brew.
          --Alan Eames

A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.
          --Ecclesiastes

Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
          --Dwight D. Eisenhower

Beer has long been the prime lubricant in our social intercourse and the sacred throat-anointing fluid that accompanies the ritual of mateship. To sink a few cold ones with the blokes is both an escape and a confirmation of belonging.
          -- Rennie Ellis

God made yeast, as well as dough, and he loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation.
          -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Landlord fill the flowing bowl,
until it doth run over.
For tonight we'll merry, merry be.
Tomorrow we're Hungover.
          --English folk song

Here's to the man who drinks strong ale,
and goes to bed quite mellow.
Lives as he ought to live,
and dies a jolly good fellow.
          --English folk song

"Wine is but a single broth,
ale is meat, drink and cloth."
          --English Proverb

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.
          -- George Farquhar

In a study, scientists report that drinking beer can be good for the liver. I'm sorry, did I say "scientists"? I meant "Irish people."
          -- Tina Fey

I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.
          --W.C. Fields

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.
          --W.C. Fields

A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.
          --W.C. Fields

I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.
          --W.C. Fields

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?
          --W.C. Fields

My illness is due to my doctor's insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies.
          --W. C. Fields

Come, landlord, fill the flowing bowl until it does run over,
Tonight we all will merry be - tomorrow we'll get sober.
          -- John Fletcher

There can't be good living where there is not good drinking.
          -- Benjamin Franklin

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
          --attributed to Benjamin Franklin - no original source found

It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.
          -- Frederick the Great, Prussia

Adhere to Schweinheitsgebot. Don't put anything in your beer that a pig wouldn't eat.
          --David Geary

The selling of bad beer is a crime against Christian love.
          -- German law - 13th century

It takes beer to make a thirst worthwhile.
          -- German proverb

I drink for the honorable purpose of getting bagged.
          --Jackie Gleason

I've never been drunk, but I've been overserved.
          -- George Gobel

There is nothing for a case of nerves like a case of beer.
          -- Joan Goldstein

I'm a meat girl and I just love having a beer.
          -- Jill Goodacre

You think a man is a man cause he wears team colors and guzzles beer in front of the tube?  Can't you see, boys, the sands of time are dribbling through the hourglass?
          -- Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, "Birds of a Feather", 1993

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 Handy

I'm worried about the beer supply. After this case and the other case, there's only once case left ...
          --Barney Gumble (The Simpsons)

...as for the girl, since she is well favoured, she shall brew the king's beer, and be numbered amongst the king's wives--unless, indeed, he is pleased to give her to me.
          --H. Rider Haggard, Benita, An African Romance

Whiskey's too tough, 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

If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.
          --Jack Handy, Deep Thought

Now harvest it is ended,
And supper it is past,
To our good mistress' health, boys,
A full and flowing glass,
For she is a good woman,
And makes us all good cheer
Here's to our mistress' health, boys,
So all drink off your beer.
          --from Harvest Supper Song, a traditional song

I decided to stop drinking with creeps. I decided to drink only with friends. I've lost 30 pounds.
          --Ernest Hemingway

It was as natural as eating and to me as necessary, and I would not have thought about eating a meal without drinking .... beer.
          --Ernest Hemingway

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
          --Ernest Hemingway

You write a book like that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer.
          --Ernest Hemingway

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
          --Ernest Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls

...be always decent and right in your home town; and when you're on the road, never take more than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent limit.
          --O. Henry, Best-seller

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

No poems can live long or please that are written by water-drinkers.
          --Horace

Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh, many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think.
          -- Alfred Edward Housman, A Shropshire Lad, no. 62 (1896)

The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
          -- Alfred Edward Housman

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.
          -- Alfred Edward Housman

Roses are red,
How do you do?
Drink 4 of these
and woo-oo woo!
          --Curly Howard

Real ale fans are just like train-spotters, only drunk.
          -- Christopher Howse

Good old Ale Makes beauty fresh: It causes love.  It fools dissension.  It cheers the heart.  It feeds the flesh: It lengthens life.  It's death's prevention.  It makes a beggar seem a king.  Boys it hardens.  Fools it sharpens.  ALE is so rare a thing.
         -- Inscription on an ale jug

You guys came by to have some fun. You’ll come and stay all night, I fear. But I know how to make you run. I’ll serve you all generic beer.
          -- Irish toast

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!
          --Traditional Irish toast

They who drink beer will think beer.
          --Washington Irving

The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
          --William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Beer, if drunk with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health.
          --Thomas Jefferson

That questionable superfluity—small beer.
          --Douglas William Jerrold, The Tragedy of the Till

No, sir: There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
          --Samuel Johnson

As he brews, so shall he drink.
          --Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Drink! for you know not when you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
          -- Omar Khayyam Rubaiyat

I'm Catholic and I can't commit suicide, but I plan to drink myself to death.
          -- Jack Kerouac

Even though a number of people have tried, no one has yet found a way to drink for a living.
          -- Jean Kerr (who evidently never knew Michael Jackson)

Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
          -- Omar Khayyam

'Ere's to English women an' a quart of English beer.
          -- Rudyard Kipling

I think that I shall never hear
          A poem as lovely as a beer
The brew that Joe's bar has on tap
          With golden base and snowy cap
The foamy stuff I drink all day
          Until my memory melts away
Poems are made by fools I fear
          But only the Worts can make a beer.
          --Joyce Killjoy (with apologies to Joyce Kilmer)

If my mother was tied up and held ransom, I might think about making a light beer.
          --Greg Koch, Stone Brewing

Man's way to God is with beer in the hand.
          --Koffyar Proverb

Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.
         -- Henry Lawson

And what this flood of deeper brown,
which a white foam does also crown,
less white than snow, more white than mortar?
Oh, my soul!  Can this be Porter?
         -- Le Déjeuné

I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.
          -- Bill Lee

The University of Nebraska says that elderly people that drink beer or wine at least four times a week have the highest bone density. They need it - they're the ones falling down the most.
          -- Jay Leno

I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on.
          --Oscar Levant

Drinking provides a beautiful excuse to pursue the one activity that truly gives me pleasure, hooking up with fat, hairy girls.
          -- Ross Levy

I don't drink any more than the man next to me, and the man next to me is Dean Martin.
          -- Joe E. Lewis

I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I lost two weeks.
          -- Joe E. Lewis

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

We old folks have to find our cushions and pillows in our tankards. Strong beer is the milk of the old.
          -- Martin Luther

When I get a very generous introduction like that I explain that I'm emotionally moved, but on the other hand I'm Irish and the Irish are very emotionally moved. (Laughter.) My mother is Irish and she cries during beer commercials.
          -- Barry McCaffrey

People can tell what's in beer, eh? Like my brother can tell the difference between beers by what his burps taste like.
          -- Bob McKenzie (Strange Brew)

Beer Speaks. People Mumble.
          -- Tony Magee - Lagunitas Brewing

Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into
          -- Don Marquis: Certain Maxims of Archy

You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
          --Dean Martin

... For we could not now take time for further search or consideration: our victuals being much spent, especially our beere.
          --Mayflower logbook entry, 1620

Beer does not make itself properly by itself. It takes an element of mystery and of things that no one can understand.
          -- Fritz Maytag

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.
          -- Michelle Mastrolacasa

Whoever serves beer or wine watered down, he himself deserves in them to drown.
          --Medieval exhortation for pure beverages

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
          -- H. L. Mencken

Keep your libraries, keep your penal institutions, keep your insane asylums...give me beer.  You think man needs rule, he needs beer.  The world does not need your morals, it needs beer.  It does not need your lectures or your charity.  The souls of men have been fed with indigestibles, but the soul could make use of beer. 
          --Henry Miller

Of beer, an enthusiast said that it could never be bad, but that some brands might be better than others.
          --A.A. Milne

Why do I drink beer?  So that I can write poetry.
          --Jim Morrison

Light beer is an invention of the Prince of Darkness.
          -- Inspector Morse - from an episode of the BBC television program based on the Colin Dexter character

Why is American beer served cold? So you can tell it from urine.
          --David Moulton

Here's a toast to the roast that good fellowship lends, with the sparkle of beer and wine; May its sentiment always be deeper, my friends, than the foam at the top of the stein. Then here's to the heartening wassail, wherever good fellows are found; Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
          -- Ogden Nash

Marriage is based on the theory that when man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go work in the brewery.
          --George Jean Nathan

I drink to make other people interesting.
          --George Jean Nathan

Men are nicotine soaked, beer-besmirched, whisky greased, red-eyed devils.
          --Carrie Nation

Pure water is the best gifts a man can bring.
But who am I that I should have the best of anything?
Let princes revel at the pump, let peers with ponds make free,
Whiskey, or wine, or even beer is good enough for me.
          -- variously attributed to Lord Neaves and G.W.E. Russell

We don't know why beer drinking rodents developed fewer tumors. Follow up studies must be done.
          --Dr. Richard Nelson.

Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world.
          -- Jack Nicholson

How much beer is in German intelligence?
          -- Friederich Nietzsche

Pretty women make us BUY beer. Ugly women make us DRINK beer.
          -- Ed O'Neill

I'd loved to wear jeans and t-shirts, but everybody was in the peace movement back then. And that was my ploy. I had to be careful not to say things like 'I like meat.' Actually I just wanted to drink beer and to screw.
          -- Ed O'Neill

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

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
          --P.J. O'Rourke

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

The Puritanical nonsense of excluding children and therefore to some extent women from pubs has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be.
          -- George Orwell

Beer is the Danish national drink, and the Danish national weakness is another beer.
          --Clementine Paddleford

Whiskey and Beer are a man's worst enemies... but the man that runs away from his enemies is a coward!
          --Zeca Pagodino, songwriter

One more drink and I'd be under the host.
          --Dorothy Parker

Hitler was the archetype of the abstemious man. When the other krauts saw him drink water in the Beer Hall they should have known he was not to be trusted.
          --Robert M. Parker

Not drunk is he who from the floor
Can rise along and still drink more
But drunk is he who prostrate lies
Without the power to drink or rise.
          --Thomas Love Peacock

There are two reasons for drinking: one is when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it.
          --Thomas Love Peacock

I was at a bar nursing a beer. My nipple was getting quite soggy.
          -- Emo Philips

He was a wise man who invented beer.
          --Plato

Filled with mingled grain and amber I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber through the chamber 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 Allen Poe

I never drink without a thirst, if not a present thirst, a future one.
          --François Rabelais

When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.
          -- François Rabelais

He that buys land buys many stones,
He that buys flesh buys many bones,
He that buys eggs buys many shells,
But he that buys good ale buys nothing else.
          -- John Ray

Our Constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U.S. senators.
          --Will Rogers

I think this would be a good time for a beer.
          --Franklin D. Roosevelt (upon signing the New Deal, paving the way for the repeal of Prohibition)

When I conducted a beer-rating session last year, I wrote that most American beers taste as if they were brewed through a horse.  That offended many people in the American beer industry, as well as patriots who thought I was being subversive in praising foreign beers.  I have just read a little-known study of American beers.  So I must apologize to the horse.  At least with a horse, we'd know what we're getting.
          --Mike Royko

There's no place that I'd rather be than right here, with my redneck, white socks and Blue Ribbon Beer
          --Johnny Russell

The Church is nearby, the road is icy. The bar is far away but I will walk carefully.
          --Russian Proverb

Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.
          --Arnold Schwarzenegger

'Twas Christmas broach'd the mightiest ale;
'twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
a Christmas gambol oft could cheer
the poor man's heart through half the year.
          -- Sir Walter Scott

People often talk of my drinking but never mention my thirst.
          -- Scottish Proverb

God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.
          -- Ann Sexton

Blessings of your heart, you brew good ale.
          -- William Shakespeare, "Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act III, Scene I, line 273

"Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety."
          --William Shakespeare, "Henry V:" Act III, Scene II

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
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, "The Winter's Tale" act IV, scene III

She was a wight, if ever such wight were,—
Des. To do what?
Iago. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.
Des. O most lame and impotent conclusion!
          --William Shakespeare, Othello. ACT II Scene 1

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

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than saying a drunken man is happier than a sober man.
          --George Bernard Shaw

Beer I bear to thee, column of battle! 
With might mingled and with bright glory:
'tis full of song and salutary saws,
of potent incantations and joyous discourses.
         -- Sigrdrifa, the Valkeria to Sigurd, The Lay of Sigrdrifa

I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer.
          --Homer Simpson

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

Bart: "Can I get you a beer, Dad?"
Lisa: "No, I want to get him a beer!"
Homer: "Kids, kids. You can BOTH get me a beer."
          --The Simpsons

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

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.
          --Bedrich Smetana: The Bartered Bride, opera 1866

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.

Stay busy, get plenty of exercise, and don't drink too much. Then again, don't drink too little.
          -- Herman Smith-Johannsen

One drink is just right; two is too many; three are too few.
          --Spanish Proverb

Wine is bottled poetry.
          --Robert Louis Stevenson

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 John Still, Gammer Gurton’s Needle. Act ii.

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer - the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.
          --A.J.P. Taylor

An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
          --Dylan Thomas

I think fourty-nine Guinnesses is piggish
          --Dylan Thomas

Cover a war in a place where you can't drink beer or talk to a woman?  Hell no!"
          -- Hunter S. Thompson

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 barroom and you will quickly see: Bad people drink bad beer. Think about it.
          -- Hunter S. Thompson

The tavern will compare favorably with the church.
          --Henry David Thoreau

The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.
          --Henry David Thoreau

. . . it seemed to me that man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of pale ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stoppled tight for a while, and drifting about in the ocean of circumstances, but destined ere-long to mingle with the surrounding waves, or be spilled amid the sands of a distant shore.
          --Henry David Thoreau

Instead of water we got here a draught of beer,... a lumberer’s drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,—which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
          --Henry David Thoreau

There is an inn, a merry old inn
Beneath an old grey hill
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the man in the moon himself came down
One night to drink his fill.
          --a song sung by Frodo from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
              (the entire song can be found here)

Bibo, ergo sum. - I drink, therefore I am
          --Fredirect Toyou

This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption... Beer!
          --Friar Tuck - Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves

Sometimes too much drink is barely enough.
          --Mark Twain

The house was as empty as a beer closet in premises where painters have been at work.
          --Mark Twain

Life, alas, is very dear. Up with the glass, down with the beer!
          --Louis Untermeyer

I've only been in love with a beer bottle and a mirror.
          --Sid Vicious

Praise not the day until evening has come; a woman until she is burnt; a sword until it is tried; a maiden until she is married; ice until it has been crossed; beer until it has been drunk.
          --Viking proverb

Beer, of course, is actually a depressant, but poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.
          --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Hocus Pocus 1990

Who loves not women, wine and song
Remains a fool his whole life long.
          --Johann Heinrich Voss

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
          --Tom Waits

The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down.
          --Ethel Waters

Friends I have had both old and young,
And ale we drank and songs we sung:
Enough you know when this is said,
That, one and all, they died in bed.
         --Charles Henry (John Paul) Webb, Dum vivimus vigilamus

...for we see no Men in England more healthy than the Country Farmer, who keeps a cup of good brown Ale and a Toast, and temperately will drink a Glass of Stout.
         -- Edward Whitaker

I am for those who believe in loose delights,
I share the midnight orgies of young men,
I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
          -- Walt Whitman

Work is the curse of the drinking class.
          --Oscar Wilde

Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.
          --Kaiser Welhelm

Oftener the party fell away into straggling groups with notions for sleep, chanting at last, perhaps: "While beer brings gladness, don't forget That water only makes you wet!"
          --Harry Leon Wilson: The Spenders

24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?
          --Stephen Wright

For drink, there was beer which was very strong when not mingled with water, but was agreeable to those who were used to it. They drank this with a reed, out of the vessel that held the beer, upon which they saw the barley swim.
          -- Xenophon

The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.
          --William Butler Yeats

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
          -- William Butler Yeats

Boughs have their fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.
          -- William Butler Yeats

My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.
          --Henny Youngman

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
          --Henny Youngman

Time is never wasted when you're wasted all the time.
          --Catherine Zandonella

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline; it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
          --Frank Zappa

Unattributed:

If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good beer, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
          --Anonymous

I think someone should invent Beerguard, because how often do you actually spill Scotch on the carpet?

I feel no pain dear mother now,
But oh, I am so dry!
O take me to a brewery,
And leave me there to die.
          -Anonymous, 19th Century

Here sleeps 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 in Winchester Churchyard

And as this sinful heathen all in the barley lay,
There came in dreams an angel bright who soft these words did say—
“Arise, thou poor Cambrinus, for even all around,
In the barley where thou sleepest a nectar may be found.
.......
“In the barley where thou sleepest there hides a nectar clear,
Which men shall know in later times as porter, ale or beer.”
Then in terms the most explicit he “put the monarch through,”
And gave him ere the dream was out the recipe to brew.
          -from an anonymous poem regarding the origins of beer

I wish you a Malty Christmas
And a Hoppy New Year,
A pocket full of money
And a cellar full of Beer!
          -Anonymous toast

In Vino Veritas, In Cervesio Felicitas (in wine, truth, in beer, joy)

Reality is an illusion that occurs due to the lack of alcohol.

Beer is good food.

It's better to have beer in hand than gas in tank.

Life is too short to drink cheap beer.

Beer - it's not just for breakfast anymore

Beer. If you can't taste it, why bother!

Friends don't let friends drink Light Beer.

If nothing beats a Bud, given the choice, I'd take the nothing...

Draft beer, not people!

Remember I before E, except in Budweiser.

Give a man a beer, he'll waste an hour. Teach a man to brew, he'll waste a lifetime.

To some its a six-pack, to me it's a support Group

Here's to living single, seeing double and sleeping triple!

My drinking team has a soccer problem.

You know you're drunk when you fall off the floor.

And God said, "Let there be vodka!"
And He saw that it was good.
Then God said, "Let there be light!"
And then He said, "Whoa too much light."

There's too much blood in my alchohol system

Scotch - Because one doesn't solve the world's problems over white wine.