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INTEMPERANCe quotes
If we could sweep intemperance out of the country, there would be hardly poverty enough left to give healthy exercise to the charitable impulses.
In intoxication men betray their real characters.—So in prosperity there is a no less honest and truth-revealing intoxication than in wine.—The varnish of power brings forth at once the defects and the beauties of the human portrait.
Wise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one's mind, is to cure melancholy by madness.
See where the wild-blazing grog shop appears, there where the red waves of wretchedness swell; it burns on the edge of tempestuous years, the horrible lighthouse of hell.
Intemperance is a dangerous companion.—It throws people off their guard, betrays them to a great many indecencies, to ruinous passions, to disadvantages in fortune; makes them discover secrets, drive foolish bargains, engage in gambling, and often stagger from the tavern to the stews.
Of all the causes of crime, intemperance stands out the unapproachable chief.
Death having occasion to choose a prime minister, summoned his illustrious courtiers, and allowed them to present their claims for the office: Fever flushed his cheeks; Palsy shook his limbs; Dropsy inflated his carcass; Gout racked his joints; Asthma half strangled himself; Stone and Colic pleaded their violence; Plague, his sudden destructions; and Consumption his certainty. Then came War, with stern confidence, alluding to his many thousands devoured at a meal. Last came Intemperance, with a face like fire, shouting, "Give way, ye sickly, ferocious band of pretenders. Am I not your parent? Does not sagacity trace your origin to me? My operations ceasing, whence your power?" The grisly monarch here gave a smile of approbation, and placed intemperance at his right hand, as his favorite and prime minister.
There is no vice in nature more debasing and destructive to men than intemperance. It robs them of their reason, reputation, and interest. It renders them unfit for human society. It degrades them below the beasts that perish, and justly exposes them to universal odium and contempt.
The body, overcharged with the excess of yesterday, weighs down the mind together with itself, and fixes to the earth that particle of the divine spirit.
Drunkenness takes away the man, and leaves only the brute; it dethrones reason from its seat; stupefies conscience; ruins health; wastes property; covers the wretch with rags; reduces wife and children to want and beggary, and gives such power to appetite that physically, as well as morally, it is next to impossible to cure it.
The habit of intemperance by men in office has occasioned more injury to the public, and more trouble to me, than all other causes; and, were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask respecting a candidate for office, would be, "Does he use ardent spirits?"
Touch the goblet no more; it will make thy heart sore, to its very core.
When the cup of any sensual pleasure is drained to the bottom, there is always poison in the dregs.
He that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice.
Greatness of any kind has no greater foe than the habit of drinking.
Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil.
Those men who destroy a healthful constitution of body by intemperance and an irregular life, do as manifestly kill themselves, as those who hang, or poison, or drown themselves.
I never drink.—I cannot do it on equal terms with others.—It costs them only one day; but it costs me three; the first in sinning, the second in suffering, and the third in repenting.
One drinking saloon in a community means rags and misery for some of its people, and sixty thousand saloons in the nation mean rags and misery multiplied sixty thousand times. Universal happiness and prosperity cannot exist in the same land with the saloon any more than peace and safety can exist in a sheepfold when the wolf has entered it.
He that tempts me to drink beyond my measure, civilly invites me to a fever.
In our world death deputes intemperance to do the work of age.
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