Drunkenness, also known asinebriation oralcohol 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 ordeath.
God tells usmen fucking men is a terrible thing, but a father offering his two daughters, vestalvirgins no less, to a horde of horny buggers isheroic. Now that's straight. … God destroys the faggots with fire and brimstone. He turns a disobedient wife into salt. But he asks us toidolize drunkswho sleep with their daughters or offer them to a horny, unruly mob.
The use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage is as much an infatuation as is thesmoking of opium by theChinese, and the former is quite asdestructive 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 pamphletHow to Stop Drunkenness inGrappling 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.
The most damaging forms ofintemperance 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 goodhealth. 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, andover indulgence insex. d. Lack of properphysical exercise e. An inadequate supply of fresh air, due to improperbreathing.... The most damaging forms ofintemperance are connected with eating, strong drink, and sexual activities. Overindulgence in any of these is fatal to success...
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: "ThisdictumofLord 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. —5Co. 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!
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.
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.
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 inThe 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.
