[The Guide] says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Let’s see: two Bajoran synth ales, a glass of Damsien Wine and a Trixian Bubble Juice for the little lady. [receives drink in face] I’m still charging her for that drink. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine & Alcohol & Drink) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s1e14: The Storyteller, Quark
The next drink I have’s gonna be a lager – ice cold; there’s a little bar in Alex with a marble top counter and high stools. They serve the best beer in the whole of the Middle East. When we get through with this, I’ll buy you one. Ice Cold in Alex 1957 starring John Mills & Sylvia Syms & Anthony Quayle & Harry Andrews & Diane Clare & Richard Leech & Liam Redmond & Peter Arne et al, director J Lee Thompson
Britons liked to drink. A lot. Ian Hislop’s Age of the Do-Gooders III: Sinful Sex and Demon Drink, BBC 2010
Walk on water? I know most people out there will be saying that instead of walking on it, I should have taken more of it with my drinks. They are absolutely right. Brian Clough
Do you want a drink, do ya? Got a drop of cooking sherry. The Damned United 2009 starring Michael Sheen & Timothy Spall & Maurice Roeves & Elizabeth Carling & Oliver Stokes & Ryan Day & Peter Quinn & Colm Meaney & Henry Goodman & Jim Broadbent, director Tom Hooper, Taylor to Clough
Britain’s young drinkers – we test how much damage they are doing to themselves. And the shocking results. Tonight: Britain’s Young Drinkers, ITV 2014
Pre-loading is now standard practice among teens. ibid.
I tend to drink too much. Why? I don’t know. I think it’s er simply boredom really. Peter Cook
I was into my third bottle a day. Richard Burton, interview BBC
It’s a human frailty. ibid.
I was simply a heavy drinker who really enjoyed it and went too far. ibid.
Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine? John Keats, Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim. John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale stanza II
Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber;
Which we will take, until my roof whirl around
With the vertigo; and my dwarf shall dance. Ben Jonson, Volpone, 1606
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine. Ben Jonson, To Celia, 1616
A drink that tasted, she thought, like weak vinegar mixed with a packet of pins. H G Wells, Joan and Peter: The Story of an Education, re champagne
The labouring poor, in spite of double pay,
Are saucy, mutinous, and beggarly;
So lavish of their money and their time,
That want of forecast is the nation’s crime.
Good drunken company is their delight;
And what they get by day they spend by night.
Dull thinking seldom does their heads engage,
But drink their youth away, and hurry on old age. Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman
Let me tell you, Balram. Men drink because they are sick of life. Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger p185
I’m really glad my mum never caught me drinking, you know. I’m glad the police never arrested me and took me down to the police station because my mum would have had to get me out and that would have been a fate worse than death. She’d walk in [eyes bulge] ... ‘Where is the criminal? You bring shame and hoo-miliation down on my family [weeps]! You mean to say you is an alcoholic now? You with the three stripes ...’ [beats himself and leaps frantically]. Lenny Henry, on stage
’Tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess. John Selden, Table Talk, 1689
I envy people who drink – at least they know what to blame everything on. Oscar Levant
Fill all the glasses here, for why
Should every creature drink but I,
Why, man of morals, tell me why? Abraham Cowley, Drinking, 1656
I gestured at my litre of fizzy red wine. ‘Want a drop of this?’ I asked him.
‘No thanks. I try not to drink at lunchtime.’
‘So do I. But I never quite make it.’
‘I feel like shit all day if I drink at lunchtime.’
‘Me too. But I feel like shit all lunchtime if I don’t.’
‘Yes, well it all comes down to choices, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s the same in the evenings. Do you want to feel good at night or do you want to feel good in the morning? It’s the same with life. Do you want to feel good young or do you want to feel good old? One or the other, not both.’
‘Isn’t it a tragedy?’ Martin Amis, Money
Best while you have it use your breath,
There is no drinking after death. John Fletcher, 1579-1625, The Bloody Brother
I feel sorry for people that don’t drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that is the best they are going to feel all day. Frank Sinatra, attributions & variations
Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? William Shakespeare, I Henry IV II v 460, Prince Harry to Sir John
That quaffing and drinking will undo you. William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night I iii 13, Maria to Sir Toby
With drinking healths to my niece. I’ll drink to her as long as there is a passage in my throat and drink in Illyria. ibid. I iii 36-38, Sir Toby to Maria
It is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I iv 15-16, Hamlet to Horatio
... drinking, fencing, swearing
Quarrelling, drabbing – you may go so far. ibid. Polonius to Reynaldo to spy on Laertes
I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment. William Shakespeare, Othello II iii 30-32, Cassio
Iago: I learned it in England, where indeed they are most potent in potting. Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander – drink, ho! – are nothing to your English.
Cassio: Is your Englishman so exquisite in his drinking?
Iago: Why, he drinks you with facility your Dane dead drunk. He sweats not to overthrow your Almain. He gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can be filled. ibid. II iii @70
I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, IV i 171, Ariel
Drink today, and drown all sorrow; you shall perhaps not do’t tomorrow. John Fletcher, Rollo
Don’t ask a man to drink and drive. UK road safety slogan from 1964
I hate it – hate it hate it hate it – when men say that women shouldn’t drink. Fuck off. If women didn’t get pissed, most of you wouldn’t get a shag. Jenny Eclair, on stage
[The Guide] says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. (Alcohol & Drink) Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy