“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, Melincourt, 1817

“Ah, beer. The cause of and the solution to all of life’s problems.” — Homer Simpson

“I feel sorry for those who don’t drink because when they get up in the morning that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.” — Frank Sinatra

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

“Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” — Benjamin Franklin (since discredited)

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

“The church is near,
but the road is icy.
The bar is far away,
but I will walk carefully.”
— Russian proverb

“Beer Speaks. People Mumble.” — Tony Magee, Lagunitas Brewing

“Drink! for you know not when you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.” — Omar Khayyan, The Rubiay’at

“One drink is just right,
two are too many,
three too few”
— Spanish saying

“Here’s to 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!” — Irish Toast

“You from 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

“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

“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

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

“Beer is the center of everything. Everything revolves around beer. When you drink beer, everything revolves. Therefore beer is the center of everything.” — University of Waterloo Engineers

“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

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

“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, SNL

“History flows forward in rivers of beer.” — Anonymous

“An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks just as much as you do.” — Dylan Thomas

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

“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

“Blessed is the mother who gives birth to a brewer.” — Czech saying

“Say for what were hopyards meant.
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of English 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.”
— A.E. Housman

“Wherever beer is brewed, all is well-wherever beer is drunk, life is good.” — Czech proverb

“Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.” — John Ciardi

“Our lager,
Which art in barrels,
Hallowed be thy drink,
Thy will be drunk,
(I will be drunk),
At home as I am in the tavern.
Give us this day our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who spill against us,
and lead us not to incarceration,
But deliver us from hangovers,
For thine is the beer,
The bitter and the lager,
Forever and ever,
Barmen.”
— The Beer Prayer

“Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.” — Kaiser Wilhelm

“[I recommend]… bread, meat, vegetables and beer.” — Sophocles (on his philosophy of a moderate diet)

“This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption… Beer!” — Friar Tuck, in the film Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves

“You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.” — Dean Martin

“Whoever serves beer or wine watered down, he himself deserves in them to drown.” — Medieval plea for pure libations

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

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

“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

“They who drink beer will think beer.” — Washington Irving

“If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.” — Jack Handy, SNL

“An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger, or a beer.” — Confucius

“The roots and herbes beaten and put into new ale or beer and daily drunk, cleareth, strengtheneth and quickeneth the sight of the eyes.” — Nicholas Culpepper

“Oh, lager beer! It makes good cheer, And proves the poor man’s worth; It cools the body through and through, and regulates the health.” — Anonymous

“The best beer is where priests go to drink. For a quart of Ale is a dish for a King.” — William Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale

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

“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.'” — Saint Columbanus, 612 C.E.

“From man’s sweat and God’s love, beer came into the world.” — Saint Arnoldus

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

“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 makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.” — Henry Lawson

“Wine is but single broth, ale is meat, drink, and cloth.” — English Proverb

“Life, alas, is very drear. Up with the glass! Down with the beer!” — Louis Untermeyer

“Beer that is not drunk had missed its vocation.” — Meyer Breslau

“I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.” — William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and to celebrate the good days.” — Ancient Egyptian Credo

“There can’t be good living where there is not good drinking.” — Ben Franklin

“You sit back in the darkness, nursing your beer, breathing in that ineffable aroma of the old-time saloon: dark wood, spilled beer, good cigars, and ancient whiskey — the sacred incense of the drinking man.” — Bruce Aidells

“Beer, if drunk in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health.” — Thomas Jefferson

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

“There is more to life than beer alone, but beer makes those other things even better.” — Stephen Morris

“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

“A little bit of beer is divine medicine.” — Paracelsus, Greek physician

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

“The mouth of perfectly happy man is filled with beer.” — Egyptian proverb

“Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer.” — Frederick the Great

“Beer … a high and mighty liquor.” — Julius Caeser

“A meal of bread, cheese and beer constitutes the perfect food.” — Queen Elizabeth I

“He that drinketh strong beer and goes to bed right mellow, lives as he ought to live and dies a hearty fellow.” — Anonymous

“Tis hard to tell which is best: music, food, beer or rest.” — Anonymous

“It’s a fair wind that blew men to ale.” — Washington Irving

“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

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

“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

“It takes beer to make a thirst worthwhile.” — German saying

“Beer is an improvement on water itself.” — Grant Johnson

“A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it’s better to be thoroughly sure.” — Bohemian proverb

“Here’s to the heart that fills as the bottle empties.” — Anonymous

“Drunkenness does not create vice; it merely brings it into view.” — Seneca

“The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.” — William James

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

“As to the way of life of the English, they are somewhat impolite, for they belch at the table without shame. They consume great quantities of beer.” — Father Etienne Perlin, 1558

“The good Lord has changed water into wine, so how can drinking beer be a sin?” — Sign near a Belgian Monastery

“Religions change, but beer and wine remain.” — Harvey Allen

“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

“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 old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.” — Brendan Behan

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

“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

“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

“I work until beer o’clock.” — Stephen King

“I am very picky about my people and my beer.” — Shelby Lynne

“Beer, it’s the best damn drink in the world.” — Jack Nicholson

“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

“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, 430-357 BCE

“Or merry swains, who quaff the nut-brown ale, and sing enamoured of the nut-brown maid.” — James Beattie

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

“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. ” — A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, 1896

“When the pilgrims, seeking religious freedom, landed at Plymouth rock, the first permanent building put up was the brewery.” — Jim West

“A man can hide all things, excepting twain — That he is drunk, and that he is in love.” — Antiphanes, 408-344 BCE

“The best audience is intelligent, well-educated and a little drunk.” — Alben W. Barkley

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

“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

“I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk.” — John Huston

“The difference between a drunk and a alcoholic is that a drunk doesn’t have to attend all those meetings.” — Arthur Lewis

“The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.” — William Butler Yeats

“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

“Who-ever makes a poor beer is tranferred to the dung hill.” — City of Danzig edict, 11th Century

“The tavern will compare favorably with the church.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Ideally, brewers interpret history, and through science they create art.” — Don Spencer, Silver City Brewery
“There’s damsels in distress out there, and we got all this beer.” — Jimmy Buffett

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

“Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.” — Thomas Hughes, Tom Browne’s Schooldays, 1857

“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

“Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into” — Don Marquis, Certain Maxims of Archy

“I’ve only been in love with a beer bottle and a mirror.” — Sid Vicious

“What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?” —Sydney Smith, British clergyman, 1934

“Demagogue — a vessel containing beer and other liquids.” — Mark Twain, Girls, 1910

“Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?” — William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Pt 2

“God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” — Anne Sexton

“We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although a poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man’s only parlour. Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer. Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers.” — William Booth, Salvation Army, 1890

“Beer, tobacco, and music,” he went on. “Behold the Fatherland.” — Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

“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, British historian, 1984

“One of the few moments of happiness a man knows in Australia is that moment of meeting the eyes of another man over the tops of two beer glasses.” — Anonymous

“If I asked her master he’d give me a cask a day;
But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!
May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may
The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.”
— James Kenneth Stephens, A Glass of Beer

“The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer;
May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair
And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.
— James Kenneth Stephens, A Glass of Beer

“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

“A statesman is an easy man,
He tells his lies by rote;
A journalist makes up his lies
And takes you by the throat;
So stay at home and drink your beer
And let the neighbours vote.”
— William Butler Yeats

“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

“Time grows dim. Time that was so long grows short, time, all goggle-eyed, wiggling her skirts, singing her torch song, giving the boys a buzz and a ride, that Nazi Mama with her beer and sauerkraut. Time, old gal of mine, will soon dim out.” — Anne Sexton

“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.
So, let’s all get drunk, and go to heaven!”
— 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!”
— Irish Toast

“For every wound, a balm.
For every sorrow, cheer.
For every storm, a calm.
For every thirst, a beer.”
— Irish Toast

“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

“I’ve never been into wine. I’m a beer man. What I like about beer is you basically just drink it and order more. You don’t sniff at it, or hold it up to the light and slosh it around, or drone on and on about it, the way people do with wine. Your beer drinker tend to be a straightforward, decent, friendly, down-to-earth person, whereas your serious wine fancier tends to be an insufferable snot.” — Dave Barry

“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

“It was as natural as eating and to me as necessary, and I would not have thought of eating a meal without drinking beer.” — Ernest Hemingway

“Most people hate the taste of beer – to begin with. It is, however, a prejudice.” — Winston Churchill

“In Vino Veritas, In Cervesio Felicitas (In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is joy)” — Anonymous

“Reality is an illusion that occurs due to the lack of alcohol.” — Anonymous

“Beer is the reason I get up every afternoon.” — Anonymous

“Adhere to the Schweinheitsgebot. Don’t put anything in your beer that a pig wouldn’t eat.” — David Geary

“One more drink and I’d be under the host.” — Dorothy Parker

“People who drink “light” beer don’t like the taste of beer; they just like to pee a lot.” — Sign at Capital Brewery, Middleton, WI

“Beer drinkin’ don’t do half the harm of love makin’.” — Old New England proverb

“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,
…beer is good enough for me.”
— Lord Neaves

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

“There can’t be good living where there is not good drinking.” — Benjamin Franklin

“I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.” — Miguel de Cervantes

“The first draught serveth for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, the fourth for madness.” — Sir Walter Raleigh

“Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.” — Lord Byron

“Beer isn’t just beer… beer needs a home.” — Die Welt, German newspaper, 1976

“Light beer is an invention of the Prince of Darkness.” — Inspector Morse (BBC)

“The selling of bad beer is a crime against Christian love.” — City of Ausburg Law, 13th century

“Beer brewers shall sell no beer to the citizens, unless it be three weeks old; to the foreigner they may knowingly sell younger beer.” — German beer law, 1466

“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

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

“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

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

“Man’s way to God is with beer in hand.” — Koffyar Tribal Wisdom, Nigeria

“Drink is the feast of reason and the flow of soul. ” — Alexander Pope

“I’ve always believed that paradise will have my favorite beer on tap. ” — Rudyard Wheatley

“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

“The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer.” — Ancient Egyptian saying

“For we could not now take time for further search (to land our ship) our victuals being much spent, especially our Beere.” — Ship’s log of the Mayflower

“A drink a day, keeps the shrink away.” — Edward Abbey

“Things don’t make me nearly as happy as talking and having a beer with my friends. And that’s something everyone can do. ” — Drew Carey

“Ale it is called among men, and among gods, beer.” — Old Norse Alvisimal 1st known mention of “ale”, 950 CE

“He that drinks strong beer, and goes to bed mellow, lives as he ought to live, and dies a hearty fellow.” — English drinking song, 17th Century

“As he brews so shall he drink.” — Ben Johnson

“I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whiskey which kills one-third of our citizens and ruins their families. ” — Thomas Jefferson

“The best place to drink beer is at home. Or on a river bank, if the fish don’t bother you. ” — American folk saying

“When I die, I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin. I wonder would they know it was me? ”

— J.P. Donleavy
The Ginger Man
“As to the way of life of the English, they are somewhat impolite, for they belch at the table without shame. They consume great quantities of beer.” — Father Etienne Perlin, 1558

“O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsopp, Bass! Names that should be on every infant’s tongue.” — C.V. Calverly

“Beer that is not drunk has missed its vocation. Meyer Breslau Beer once tasted like something. It was made out of malt and hops and yeast and pure filtered water… Nowadays it is often made of such gook as rice and corn grits… nothing but dirty water. It’s so light and clear it’s nothing…ignoble swill.” — Charles McCabe, 1960

“Drinking will make a man quaff,
Quaffing will make a man sing,
Singing will make a man laugh,
And laughing long life doth bring,
Says old Simon the King.”
— Anonymous, circa 1621

“Or merry swains, who quaff the nut-brown ale,
And sing enamour’d of the nut-brown maid.”
— James Beattie, The Minstrel

“People who don’t drink are afraid of revealing themselves.” — Humphrey Bogart

“Drinking is a way of ending the day.” — Ernest Hemingway

“I’ve made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark.” — H.L. Mencken

“One sip of this
Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight,
Beyond the bliss of dreams.”
— John Milton

“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, Anabasis

“I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.” — Johnny Carson

“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 am awake, I might as well be drinking.” — Dan Thompson

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

“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

“The moralizing tendency and salubrious nature of fermented liquors — beer, ale, porter, and cider — recommend them to a serious consideration and particularly in our country.” — Alexander Hamilton

“There are only two times when I drink beer, when I’m alone and when I’m with someone else.” — Anonymous

“Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Ahhhhhhhh!!! Natural light!!! Get it off me!!!” — Barney Gumbal, The Simpsons

“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

“After watching Conan O’Brien’s sophomoric behavior while interviewing Michael Jackson on his show this week, I have come to the conclusion that you can judge the level of a man’s intellect simply by saying the word “beer” and watching his reaction.” — Chuck Skypeck

“When the hour is nigh me,
Let me in a tavern die,
With a tankard by me.”
— Confesio, 12th Century

“You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.” — Adolphus Busch

“Let no man thirst for lack of Real Ale.” — Commonwealth Brewing, Boston, Mass.

“Fermentation may have been a greater discovery than fire.” — David Rains Wallace

“Six pints of bitter,’ said Ford Prefect…. ‘And quickly please, the world’s about to end.’” — Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“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 of Prussia, 1777

“We brewers don’t make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself.” — Fritz Maytag

“It’s very hard to get pretentious about beer. You can become knowledgeable and start to talk with a highfalutin’ vocabulary. But you can only go so far with beer, and I’ve always liked that.” — Fritz Maytag

“He is not deserving the name of Englishman who speaketh against ale, that is, good ale.” — George Borrow

“Lo! the poor topper whose untutored sense,
Sees bliss in ale, and can with wine dispense;
Whose head proud fancy never taught to steer,
Beyond the muddy ecstasies of beer.”
— George Crabbe

“. . . 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, Cape Cod, 1855-65

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

“There is nothing in the world like the first taste of beer.” — John Steinbeck

“Beer…the mother of all of us.” — John Shepard

“Beer, of course, is actually a depressant, but poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

“If God had wanted us to filter our beer, he wouldn’t have given us livers” — Larry Bell

“While beer brings gladness, don’t forget
That water only makes you wet.”
— Larry Leon Wilson, The Spenders

“Here’s to life and a merry one, a quick death and a pretty one, a pretty girl and a true one, a cold beer and another one.” — Lewis C. Henry

“The wise son brings joy to his father, but the wiser son brings beer.” — Mad Mordigan

“Well, I never met a beer I didn’t drink. And down it goes.” — Norm Peterson, Cheers

“Terrorists, Sam. They’ve taken over my stomach. They’re demanding beer.” — Norm Peterson, Cheers

l have a froth of beer and a snorkel.” — Norm Peterson, Cheers

“Well, I am going to need something to kill time before my second beer. Uhhh, how about a first one?” — Norm Peterson, Cheers

“When the beer bubbles, the masses forget their troubles.” — The Peoples Daily, China

“When the bee comes to your house, let her have beer; you may want to visit the bee’s house some day.” — Congoese proverb

“It takes Beer to make thirst worthwhile.” — German proverb

“Ale sellers should not be taletellers.” — Scottish proverb

“Listening to someone who brews his own beer is like listening to a religious fanatic talk about the day he saw the light.” — Ross Murray, Montreal Gazette, 1991

“Let no man thirst for good beer.” — Samuel Adams

“It is not “just beer,” it is a noble and ancient beverage which, like wine, food and television advertising, can be extraordinarily good or unmercifully bad.” — Stephen Beaumont

“Beer isn’t just beer….beer needs a home.” — Stephen Beaumont

“24 beers in a case. 24 hours in a day. Coincidence?” — Steven Wright

“Beer soothes the upset soul.” — Thomas Mann

“A full beer is a perfect beer.” — Tim Russman

“But if at church they would give some ale
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale.
Wed sing and wed pray all the livelong day,
Nor ever once from the church to stray.”
— William Blake

“…there is only one game at the heart of America and that is baseball, and only one beverage to be found sloshing at the depths of our national soul and that is beer.” — Peter Richmond

“Brewers enjoy working to make beer as much as drinking beer instead of working.” — Howard Rudolph

“I never met a pub I didn’t like.” — Pete Slosberg

“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.” — Anonymous

“Life is too short to drink cheap beer.” — Rene Deschutes

“I drink, therefore, I am.” — Anonymous

“…Actually, I’m a drinker with writing problems.” — Brendan Behan

“Life begins at 60 — 1.060, that is.” — Denny Conn

“Beer is a wholesome liquor….it abounds with nourishment.” — Dr. Benjamin Rush

“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

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

“Why do I drink? So that I can write poetry.” — Jim Morrison

“Women and drink. Too much of either can drive you to the other.” — Michael Still

“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

“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

“I don’t have a drinking problem, except when I can’t find a drink.” — Tom Waits

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

“Who does not love beer, wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.” — Carl Worner

“Wine gentrifies, beer unifies.” — W. Scott Griffith

“Beer will always have a definite role in the diet of an individual and can be considered a cog in the wheel of nutritional foods.” — Bruce Carlton

“Beer is the fountain of happiness.” — Anonymous

“I don’t have a drinking problem so much as I have a drinking solution.” — Anonymous

“A pleasant aperitif, as well as a good chaser for a short quick whiskey, as well again for a fine supper drink, is beer.” — M.F.K. Fisher

“Because beer is food: in cooking, at the table, and by the glass …” — Lucy Saunders

“Payday came and with it beer.” — Rudyard Kipling

“In the barley where thou sleepest there hides nectar clear, Which men shall know in later times as porter, ale or beer.” — Anonymous

“Bad people drink bad beer. You almost never see an empty bottle of Rochefort tossed onto the side of the road.” — Dave Cooks

“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

“I wish you a Malty Christmas
And a Hoppy New Year,
A pocket full of money
And a cellar full of Beer!”
— Anonymous Toast

“Not everybody is strong enough to endure life without an anesthetic. Drink probably averts more gross crime than it causes.” — George Bernard Shaw

“We’re in different businesses (than big brewers). We both make something called beer, but they don’t really taste much alike. The big brewers are of a completely different mindset. A-B has more in common with Coca-Cola than they do with us. That’s not to say their beer is bad. It’s just different from what we make. If you look at their advertising you see they are trying to sell lifestyle.” — Brock Wagner, St. Arnold Brewing founder

“Oatcakes are a delicate relish when eaten warm with ale.” — Robert Burns

“Mankind: The animal that fears the future and desires fermented beverages.” — Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1755-1826

“I believe, 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 into this vice.” — Abraham Lincoln, 1842

“No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by water-drinkers.” — Horace

“I know Bacchus, the god of wine, for he smells of nectar; but all I know of the god of beer is that he smells of the billy goat.” — Emperor Julian the Apostate, 361 CE

“Stick thirteen black-headed pins into the cork of the bottle that gave you the hangover.” — Haitian Voodoo Curse

“I have often regretted what I have eaten, but never what I have drunk.” — Otto Von Bismark

“Let a neat housewife … have the handling of good ingredients — sweet malt and good water — and you shall see and will say there is an art in brewing.” — Dr. Cyril Folkingham, 1623

“A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.” — Samuel Johnson

“Pilsners should be refreshing and invigorating all the time, whether you’ve just played nine innings in the sun or are simply watching the game.” — Eric Asimov

“Up to age forty, eating is beneficial; after forty, drinking.” — The Talmud

“For our food, I slaughtered sheep and oxen, day by day; with beer, oil and water, I filled large jugs.” — Atrahasis, Sumerian Folk Hero

“We drink all we can. The rest we sell.” — Utica Club Brewery, 1965

“I distrust camels and anyone else who can go a week without drinking.” — Joe E. Lewis

“Kitchens in Milwaukee are built with three taps — marked hot, cold and Schlitz.” — Old Milwaukee saying

“America’s craft brewers know that beer, not wine, is the best beverage for accompanying a good meal.” — Nancy Johnson

“Any foreign trip is better if you can visit a few breweries.” — Fred Eckhardt

“A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.” — The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:13

“Beer is a gift from the goddesses, a soothing balm given our species to bring joy and comfort in compensation for the curse of self-awareness, the awful realization of our mortality.” — Alan Eames

“Brehm asserts that the natives of Northeastern Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk….. On the following morning … they held their aching heads with both hands.” — Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859

“I rose politely in the club
And said, I feel a little bored.
Will someone take me to a pub?”
— G.K. Chesterton, A Ballade of An Anti-Puritan, 1915

“Hops, turkies, carp, and beer
Came into England all in one year.”
— Old English Proverb

“Called ale among men; but by the gods called beer.” — The Alvismát

“In eating, a third of the stomach should be filled with food, a third with drink, and the rest left empty.” — The Talmud

“… in life, there’s always room for beer.” — Tom Ciccateri

“Beer was not made to be moralized about, but to be drunk.” — Theodore Maynard

“Most chefs don’t drink wine at the end of the night; it’s too heavy. They drink beer.” — Wendy Littlefield

“I’m going to drink beer. Beer tastes like champagne after a win like tonight” — George Karl, Denver Nuggets coach

“A number of herbs having been worked up in clean ale, the patient was to sing seven masses over the worts, then to add garlic and holy water, and was drink the mixture out of a church bell.” — Ancient recipe for casting out devils

“I wish we could all have good luck, all the time! I wish we had wings! I wish rainwater was beer.” — Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons, 1960

“The [English] pub has always been much more than just a tavern—it is a clubhouse, a meeting place, a community center.” — Anthony Dias Blue

“Some malt the Indian corne, others barley, of which they make good Ale, both strong and small, and such plenty thereof few of the upper Planters drinke any water.” — John Smith, Jamestown, Va., 1625

“Not drunk is he who from the floor
Can rise again and drink some more;
But drunk is he who prostrate lies,
And who can neither drink nor rise.”
— Eugene Field

“Thirsty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest are thirsty too
Except for him who hath home brew.”
— Anonymous

“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

“Leave the flurry
To the masses;
Take your time
And shine your glasses.”
— Old Shaker saying

“Good ale and good beer are drinks of temperate men, and it must be confessed that England has bred a race of mighty fighting men on her national brew. Good beer is the basis of true temperance.” — Daily Express, January 25, 1919

“Drinking will make a man quaff,
Quaffing will make a man sing,
Singing will make a man laugh,
And laughing long life doth bring.”
— Thomas D’Urfey

“Said Aristotle unto Plato,
‘Have another sweet potato?’
Said Plato unto Aristotle,
‘Thank you, I prefer the bottle.'”
— Owen Wister

“Be one who drinks the finest of ales every day without fail. Even when you have drank enough, remember that ale is wonderful stuff.” — Anonymous

“If barley be wanted to make into malt
We must be content and think it no fault.
For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut tree chips.”
— 17th Century Song

“For fear that one drink will be lonesome, take another to keep it company, and another to keep peace between them.” — Anonymous

“Beer has long been the prime lubricant in our social intercourse and the sacred throat-anointing fluid that accompanies the ritual of mateship.” — Rennie Ellis

“When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night—
A pint of plain is your only man.”
— Flann O’Brien

“Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul.” — Blessing of the Beer, Rituale Romanum (no. 58)

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

“Be of good cheer, drink only great beer.” — Jay Brooks

“Beer is a health food.” — George F. Will

“For secular people who favor a wall of separation between church and tavern, beer is evidence that nature wants us to be.” — George F. Will

“I have seen the love stars shining
Through bronze hair across my face.
I have seen white bosoms heaving
Though a wisp of open lace;
But one sight is dear to memory,
And it seemeth brighter far—
Just a guttered candles flicker
On a tankard on a bar. ”
— John Barr

“Who does not know beer, does not know what is good. Beer makes the home pleasant.” — Sumerian proverb

“I have no pain, dear mother, now, but oh! I am so dry. Connect me to a brewery. And leave me there to die.” — parody of Edward Farmer, The Collier’s Dying Child, 1870

“When the bee comes to your house, let her have beer; you may want to visit the bee’s house some day.” — Congolese Proverb

“Beer … because none of the world’s problems were ever solved with white wine.” — Karl Wichmann

“Brewers enjoy working to make beer as much as drinking beer instead of working.” — Harold Rudolph

“Alcohol is good for you. My grandfather proved it irrevocably. He drank two quarts of booze every mature day of his life and lived to the age of 103. I was at the cremation – that fire would not go out.” — Dave Astor

“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

“Way down south they had a jubilee,
Them Georgia folks, they had a jamboree.
They were drinking homebrew from a wooden tub,
The folks that were dancin’ there got all shook up.”
— Chuck Berry

“If you can make oatmeal cookies at home, you can brew beer.” — Bob Carbone

“The brewery is the best drug store.” — German proverb

“My people must drink beer.” — Frederick the Great of Prussia, 1777

“One of the hallmarks of the baby boomer generation is that it doesn’t live like the previous generation. It hasn’t yet given up jeans and T-shirts or beer.” — Ron Klugman; Sr. V-P, Coors Brewing

“No soldier can fight unless he is properly fed on beef and beer.” — John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough

“It is my aim to win the American people over to our side, to make them all lovers of beer.” — Adolphus Busch

“Everybody has to believe in something … I believe I’ll have another beer.” — W.C. Fields

“Beer that is not drunk has missed its vocation.” — Meyer Breslau

“Together we can stop the spread of lite beer” — On a T-shirt from Half Pints Brewing, Canada

“You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.” — Ray Daniels

“Pretty women make us BUY beer. Ugly women make us DRINK beer.” — Al Bundy

“The brewery is the best drugstore” — Old German folk wisdom

“American beer, just like its people, is an extreme melting pot of creativity, tradition, capitalism and an unnerving sense of complete disregard for reality. I don’t think I’d have it any other way.” — Tom Goodwin

“Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.” — George Bernard Shaw

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.” — Hunter S. Thompson

“Good ale, the true and proper drink of Englishmen. He is not deserving of the name of Englishman who speaketh against ale, that is good ale.” — George Borrow, 1851, Lavengro

“They’re drinkin’ homebrew from a wooden cup, The folks were dancin’ there got all shook up.” — Chuck Berry, Rock ‘n’ Roll Music

“Let’s all work to get people to drink more good beer, so if someone walks into your office and says he drinks Corona, don’t immediately call him a dickhead.” — Michael Jackson

“The Baker says, ‘I’ve the staff of life and you’re a silly elf.’ The Brewer replied, with artful pride, ‘Why this is life itself.'” — 13th Century Anonymous

“For years the American workman would stagnate through his workday, but in the evening, he could get home, sit down and watch the TV, pop open a beer, and, then and there, get ahead.” — Jerry Blaz

“I should like a great lake of ale, for the King of Kings. I should like the family of heaven to be drinking it through time eternal.” — St. Brigid

“I wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, with your pockets full of money, and your cellar full of beer.” — Old English Carol

“I lived from beer of black wheat, and drank from beer of white wheat.” — Engraving on Ancient Egyptian tomb

“Old men and young, while gathered around the social beer table, relate their experience and quantity of beer they have swallowed at one sitting, or in one day, or in one evening with as much pride as an old hunter would rehearse his achievements in the forest or jungle. They seem to be as proud of the capacity of their stomachs as a prize fighter is of his muscle.” — Henry Ruggles, 1883

“‘Drink took to me,’ said Simple. ‘Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.'” — Langston Hughes

“It never rains in the brewhall.” — Old German Saying

“I have never found that Bass’s India draught pale ale, taken in small quantities at meals disagrees… The drink is laxative, while the contrary is to be said of other ales and porters.” — Roger Protz

“Wine is on every lip: beer in every stomach. Those same writers who prate about priceless wines, drink beer.” — Anonymous, 1934

“Beer by Christmas would be the most welcome news the American people could have since the depression began.” — William Randolph Hearst, 11.10.32

“Drinking really cold beer is like slapping yourself in the face with an ice pick.” — Michael Jackson

“That Osiris founded there the dynasty of the Beer Kings.” — Peluseum, Ancient Egypt

“Hermit hoar, in solemn cell, wearing out life’s evening gray. Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell, what is bliss, and which the way? Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed, scarce repressed a starting tear. When the smiling sage reply’d, come, my lad, and drink some beer.” — Samuel Johnson

“There is food in beer, but there is no beer in food. Beer is like liquid bread-it provides the same necessary nutrients. I say, just lay off the food.” — Jim Koch

“For this my heart is set, when the hour is nigh me, let me in the tavern die, with a tankard by me, while the angels looking down joyously sing o’er me. Deus sit propitius huic potatori.” — Anonymous, 12th Century

“Beer does not make itself properly by itself. It takes an element of mystery and of things that no one can understand. As a brewer you concern yourself with all the stuff you can understand, everywhere.” — Fritz Maytag

“Beer has food value, but food has no beer value.” — Anonymous

“Such power hath Beer. The heart which grief hath canker’d Hath one unfailing remedy – the Tankard.” — Charles Stuart Calverley

“In some countries, when a boy reaches a certain age it is customary for his father to take him to a bordello so as to ensure his proper initiation into one of life’s greatest pleasures. In England, the equivalent custom is for the father to take his son on his first visit to a pub and to supervise his initiation into the ritual of beer-drinking in a proper social environment.” — Terry Foster

“Nothing quenches the thirst like a wheat beer, or sharpens the appetite like an India pale ale. Nothing goes as well with seafood as a dry porter or stout, or accompanies chocolate like an imperial stout. Nothing soothes like a barley wine. These are just a few of the specialty styles of beer.” — Michael Jackson

“All of the buildup and hype, everything else, is foam. The game is the beer.” — Marv Levy, football coach

“Brewing is the art of feeding sugar to yeast.” — Jeff Frane, 1994, Zymurgy

“It’s extraordinary how friendly you can make a lot of people on a couple bottles of beer.” — Baron Frankenstein, in 1931 film “Frankenstein”

“With hekt (beer) the Ka (spirit) is kept in balance with the liver and blood — Hekt is the liquid of happy blood and body.” — Ancient Egyptian Physician

“Drink beer, the custom of the land! Beer he drank, seven goblets. His spirit was loosened, he became hilarious. His heart became glad and his face shone.” — Epic of Gilgamesh, 1200 BCE

“Cerevisiam Bibat! (drink beer for health)” — St. Hildegard von Bingen, 1150 CE

“They didn’t trademark everything back then. Now someone farts and they put a TM after it. Even Miller Lite says ‘A Fine Pilsener Beer’ on the label. It is a crime.” — Michael Jackson

“I don’t drink beer like a girl.” — Cornelia Corey, 2001 Beerdrinker of the Year

“Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.” — Jonathan Swift

“On the chest of a barmaid in Sale, were tattooed the prices of ale. And on her behind, for the sake of the blind, was the same information in Braille!” — Anonymous

“I feel wonderful, drinking beer in a blissful mood, with joy in my heart and a happy liver.” — Sumerian inscription, 3000 BCE

“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

“A clay tablet dating around 4000 BC excavated in what is today Syria is inscribed with what is known as the earliest known beer advertisement. The tablet is adorned with a large-breasted woman holding two goblets and is inscribed with the caption ‘Drink Ebla Beer — the beer with the heart of a lion!'” — Zymurgy, 1998

“They proceed with the speed of rockets to the northeast corner of the universe, which George perceived to be shaped exactly like a pint of beer, in which the nebulae were the ascending bubbles.” — John Collier; The Devil, George, and Rosie

“The perverted ingenuity of man has given to water the power of intoxicating where wine is not procured. Western nations intoxicate themselves by moistened grain.” — Pliny the Elder

“Everybody’s old enough for a beer, ain’t that right, Mule?” — Jack Nicholson, in “The Last Detail”

“Ale — not beer — in a pewter mug was comme il faut, the only thing for a gentlemen of letters, worthy of the name, to drink.” — Guy de Maupassant, Twelve Men

“Friends don’t let friends drink Lite Beer.” — Anonymous

“Blessings of your heart, you brew good ale.” — William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona

“It isn’t because there are no refrigerators in England. If you order a Heineken in England (you must be a lunatic) it will be chilled.” (explaining the US perception that UK beer is warm) — Michael Jackson

“None so deaf as those who will not hear. None so blind as those who will not see. But I’ll wager none so deaf nor blind that he sees not nor hears me say come drink this beer.” — W.L. Hassoldt

“Beer drinkers have been duped by mass marketing into the belief that it makes sense to drink only one brand of beer. In truth, brand loyalty in beer makes no more sense than ‘vegetable loyalty’ in food. Can you imagine it? “No thanks, I’ll pass on the mashed potatoes, carrots, bread and roast beef. Me, I’m strictly a broccoli man.'” — Stephen Beaumont

“Whiskey’s too rough, 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

“Englishmen are like their own beer: Frothy on top, dregs on the bottom, the middle excellent.” — Voltaire

“Everybody drank, and nobody drank moderately; the vice was common to all. At social parties no gentleman ever thought of leaving the table sober; the host would have considered it a slight on his hospitality.” — F.W. Hackwood, 18th century England

“And Tib my wife, that as her life, loveth well good ale to seek. Full oft she drinks, till ye may see, tears run down her cheek.” — John Still, Bishop of Bath & Wells, 1543-1608

“Make the long night shorter, Forgetting not, Good stout old English Porter.” — R. H. Messenger, Give Me the Old

“So laugh, lads, and quaff, lads, twill make you stout and hale; through all my days, I’ll sing the praise of brown October ale.” — Reginald De Koven, song from Robin Hood

“My house is about equidistant from the Young’s brewery and the Fuller’s brewery. This is no accident.” — Michael Jackson

“Beer Is Love.” — Brent Runyon

“Well I woke up this mornin’ and got myself a beer.” — Jim Morrison; Roadhouse Blues, The Doors

“Her ale, if new, looks like a misty morning, all thick; well if her ale be strong, her reckoning right, her house clean, her fire good, her face fair, and the town great or rich, she shall seldom or never sit without chirping birds to bear her company.” — Donald Lupton, 1632

“They who have drunk beer — fall on their back — for they who get drunk on other intoxicating liquors fall on all parts of their body — it is only those who get drunk on beer who fall on their backs and lie with their faces upwards.” — Aristotle

“While you merely see the disease bearing viruses, I see the benign microorganisms which by making, among other things, strong beers — and enable you to spend your evenings in alcoholic bliss.” — Patrick McGinley, 1978

“This beer is good for you. This is draft beer. Stick with the beer. Let’s go and beat this guy up and come back and drink some more beer.” — Ernest Hemingway, To Have and Have Not

“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 & Sue King, A Drink With Something In It

“Well they worked their will on John Barleycorn, but he lived to tell the tale. For they pour him out of an old brown jug, and they call him home brewed ale!” — Anonymous

“Ale is made of malte and water; and they the whiche do put any other thynge to ale than is rehersed, except yest, barme or godesgood, doth sophysticat theyr ale.” — Andrew Boorde, A Compendious Regyment or a Dyetary of Helth, 1542

“To stare too intently at a glass of beer, or sniff it too obviously, in a bar or pub can be a questionable enterprise, but those are the first steps in appreciation. All food and drink is enjoyed with the eyes and nose as well as the mouth, and beer is no exception.” — Michael Jackson, New World Guide To Beer

“Chicba, corn beer, was the vehicle that linked man to his gods through the fecundity of the earth.” — Gustravo Otero, 1951

“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

“Mother’s in the kitchen washing out the jugs. Sister’s in the pantry bottling the suds. Father’s in the cellar mixin’ up the hops. Johnny’s on the front porch watchin’ for the cops.” — Prohibition song

“Listening to someone who brews his own beer is like listening to a religious fanatic talk about the day he saw the light.” — Ross Murray, Montreal Gazette

“The awe with which man has regarded this natural process finds spontaneous expression in the fact the animating essence produced by fermentation is identified in language with the essence of human life, both being designated by the term ‘spirit.'” — J.P. Arnold, 1933

“A little bit of beer is divine medicine.” — Paracelsus, Greek physician

“I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whiskey which kills one-third of our citizens and ruins their families.” — Thomas Jefferson; on beer, 1816

“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

“You could make an argument for Portland being the beer capital of the world. When I come into the airport, I’d like to see a sign that says, ‘Welcome to the Beer Capital.'” — Michael Jackson

“How can I who drink — bitter beer every day of my life — cooly stand up and advise hard working fellow-creatures to take the pledge?” — William Gladstone, on the UK Permissive Prohibitory Bill, 1880

“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. Then the world seemed none so bad, and I myself a sterling lad. And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, happy — till I woke up again.” — A.E. Housman

“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

“Thought of giving it all away, to a registered charity. All I need is a pint a day.” — Paul McCartney

“Everyone has his own lifetime dream. Mine is that someday, in a tavern somewhere, I’ll hold up a pitcher of beer like this and I’ll say, Bartender? Could I have a glass? And he’ll look back at me and say, Friend, this is the glass!” — Joe Martin (Mister Boffo comic strip)

“Here’s to beer, so amber and pure. Not as sweet as a woman’s lips, But a damn sight more sincere.” — Old Irish Toast

“Poor John Scott lies buried here, although he was both hale and stout. Death stretched his on the bitter bier, in another world he hops about.” — On tomb of Liverpool brewer

“Let us sing our own treasures, Old England’s good cheer, to the profits and pleasures of stout British beer. Your wine tippling, dram sipping fellows retreat, but your beer drinking Britons can never be beat. The French with their vineyards and meager pale ale, they drink from the squeezing of half ripe fruit. But we, who have hop-yards to mellow our ale, are rosy and plump and have freedom to boot.” — English drinking song, 1757

“Water is good for only two things: floating ships and making beer.” — Anonymous

“Beefsteaks and porter are good belly mortar.” — Scottish proverb, 1760

“In wine there is wisdom. In beer is strength. In water is bacteria.” — German saying

“A glass of bitter or pale ale, taken with the principal meal of the day, does more good and less harm than any medicine the physician can prescibe.” — Dr. S. Carpenter, England, 1750

“The West Coast, particularly the northern part, is the most youthful and energetic part of the USA. It’s almost as if the people are reflected in the beer. That might sound a slightly poetic way of looking at it, but I think it’s true.” — Michael Jackson

“O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsopp, Bass! Names that should be on every infant’s tongue.” — C.V. Calverley

“A beer in the hand is worth two in the case.” — Walter Breidenstein

“And so, you see, ’twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his kindness…and not to be so ill-mannered as to drink only a thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man’s generosity. And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by the time I got there I was as dry as a lime-basket so thorough dry that ale would slip-ah, ‘twould slip down sweet! Happy times! Heavenly times! Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that house!” — Thomas Hardy, Far From The Maddening Crowd

“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.” — A.E. Housman

“The day before election day they were still bowing their necks to the Anti-Saloon League, but two days later they were howling for beer and by the end of the year they were also howling for whisky, gin and rum.” — H. L. Mencken (on the U.S. congress & election of 1932)

“Mankind: The animal that fears the future and desires fermented beverages.” — Brillat Savarin

“They told me this story while we were waiting for an up-train. I supplied the beer. The tale was cheap at a gallon and a half.” — Rudyard Kipling, The Three Musketeers

“No microbrewer in his right mind should make wheat beer. Five years from now it will be dead (as a commercial product).” — Joe Owades, April 1987

“Some miners [in the town where he started his journalism career] would have 20 pints after a hard day in the mine. Now that we sit behind computers all day, this is down to 18 or 19 pints.” — Michael Jackson

“I have fed purely upon ale; I have ate my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.” — George Farquhar, The Beaux’ Strategem

“Beer! my father would bawl whenever some elder dared to chide his tippling. Beer is my food! To maintain his strength he seldom drank less than four quarts a day.” — Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum

“Prohibition has made our president a dictator, executing an unpopular law by force of arms. It has made our congressmen cowards and hypocrites, passing more, and more oppressive laws, while themselves carrying whisky flasks in their hip pockets. Prohibition has divided our people into factions almost as bitterly hostile to each other as the factions that existed before the Civil War.” — William Randolph Hearst, 1932

“Schaum ist kein bier” (Froth is not beer.) — German proverb, 16th century

“What do you say to a beer? I say, ‘You come here often?'” — Walter Breidenstein

“And there are few things in this life so revolting as sipped beer. But let it go down your throat as suds go down the drain, and you will quickly realize that this is a true friend, to be admitted to your most secret counsels. Long draughts with an open throat are the secret.” — Maurice Healy

“What the sober man has in his heart, the drunken man has on his lips.” — Danish proverb

“Lo! the poor topper whose untutored sense, sees bliss in ale, and can with wine dispense. Whose head proud fancy never taught to steer, beyond the muddy ecstasies of beer.” — George Crabbe

“For some ten-thousand years, women have maintained power in male dominated hunter-gather societies through their skills as brewsters.” — Alan Eames

“I am the first man south of the Mason-Dixon line to brew a drinkable home-brew.” — H. L. Mencken, Heathen Days

“A full beer is a perfect beer.” — Tim Russman

“Beer once tasted like something. It was made out of malt and hops and yeast and pure filtered water… Nowadays it is often made of such gook as rice and corn grits… nothing but dirty water. It’s so light and clear it’s nothing… ignoble swill.” — Charles McCabe, 1960

“Heaven! that’s another tale. Mightn’t let me chew there. Gotta have me a pot of ale; would I like the brew there?” — Robert Service, Grandad

“And many a skeleton shook his head. ‘Instead of preaching forty year!’ My neighbor Parson Thirdly said, ‘I wish I’d stuck to pipes and beer.'” — Thomas Hardy, Channel Firing, 1914

“Why, we’ll smoke and drink our beer. For I like a drop of good beer, I does. I’ze fond of good beer, I is. Let gentlemen fine sit down to their wine. But we’ll all of us here stick to our beer.” — Old Somersetshire English song

“To clink glasses of a freshly made, seasonal beer, preferably in a pub or garden, with friends and perhaps new acquaintances, is a ritual that makes every participant feel good. We may not rationalize this at the time, but it gives us a sense of place in our common community and our time in the tides of life on earth. This is a way to value beer and treat it with respect.” — Michael Jackson

“Good beer is the basis of true temperance.” — The Daily Express, 1919

“Bad beer is like bad art — if you endure enough of it, eventually you forget the alternatives.” — Stephen Greenleaf

“I make my beers the way I like them and it happens that a lot of other people like them that way too.” — Bert Grant

“There is food in beer, but there is no beer in food. Beer is like liquid bread — it provides the same necessary nutrients. I say, just lay off the food.” — Jim Koch

“This physical loathing for alcohol I have never got over. But I have conquered it. To this day I conquer it every time I take a drink. The palate never ceases to rebel, and the palate can be trusted to know what is good for the body. But men do not drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.” — Jack London, in John Barleycorn

“Beer may cause you to digress – and lead a happier life.” — Michael Jackson

“It is the general consensus of opinion that ‘near beer’ is utterly useless as a beverage, that it affords no pleasure whatsoever, and that it is a waste of time to bother with it. The consumption of eight or nine bottles gives them a sense of nauseated fullness with none of the simulated sense of well-being that the old time beer gave only after two or three bottles.” — City of New York Department of Welfare, King’s County Hospital, 1920

“For it [beer] possesses the essential quality of gulpability. Beer is more gulpable than any other beverage and consequently it ministers to the desire to drink deeply. When one is really thirsty the nibbling, quibbling, sniffing, and squinting technique of the wine connoisseur becomes merely idiotic. Then is the moment of the pint tankard of bitter.” — Anonymous

“Out in the Pool certain other boats caught the eye… each carried a bright fire amidships, in a brazier, beside a man, two small barrels of beer, and a very large handbell. The men were purlmen, Grandfather Nat told me, selling hot beer in the cold mornings — to the men on the colliers, or on any other craft thereabout.” — Arthur Morrison, The Hole In The Wall, 1902

“Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.” — John Milton, L’Allegro

“I’ve always believed that paradise will have my favorite beer on tap.” — Rudyard Wheatley

“There are those descended from an unawakened race of men who did not receive and do not revere the yeast. These sometimes attempt to brew — rather, merely manipulate ingredients — and swill the festered residues. But not to them is revealed the simplicity of art, either of beer or of poetry. Not for them is the beatitude of the true Malt; such people are cultural dropouts.” — John F. Adams

“And in my innocence, I thought that beer drinking in England was carried to excess, but I was mistaken, English men are in the infant class — in the ABC’s in acquiring a German’s education in the practice of beer drinking.” — Henry Ruggles

“And thou shalt give to me health, life, long existence, and prolonged reign, endurance to my every member, sight to my eyes, hearing to my ears, pleasure to my heart daily. And thou shalt give me beer until I am drunk. And thou shalt establish my issue as kings forever and ever.” — Ramses IV, Prayer to Osiris, 1200 BCE

“I drank only water; the other workmen, near 50 in number, were great guzzlers of beer. We had an alehouse boy who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press, drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese; a pint in the afternoon about six o’clock, and another when he’d done his day’s work…but it was necessary, he suppos’d, to drink strong beer that he might be strong to labor. Those who continu’d sotting with beer all day, were often, by not paying out of cr at the alehouse, and us’d to make interest with me to get beer, their light, as they phras’d it, being out.” — Benjamin Franklin

“The man who called it ‘near beer’ was a bad judge of distance.” — Philander Johnson/Luke McLuke, Cincinnati Enquirer

“One mouth doesn’t taste the beer.” — Bantu proverb

“A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.” — Jonathan Swift 485 “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 31: 6-7

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.” — Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.” — James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

“Better thin beer than an empty jug” — Danish proverb

“Home is where you hang your hangover.” — James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

“If smirking wine be wanted here
There’s that which drowns all cares, stout beer.”
— Robert Herrick

“Whiskey and Beer are a man’s worst enemies … but the man that runs away from his enemies is a coward!” — Zeca Pagodinho

“Save the Earth … It’s the only planet with beer.” — Anonymous, seen on a t-shirt

“Drinking beer doesn’t make you fat, it makes you lean … against bars, tables, chairs and poles.” — Anonymous

“The government will fall that raises the price of beer.” — Czech proverb

“Is beer fluid? Of course, it’s got all that wet stuff in it.” — Bill Murray & Chris Elliot, in Osmosis Jones

“Drinking Saison is like a walk in the woods. At first you notice only the forest, but then you discover the individual trees, and finally the smaller and more discreet inhabitants. Sensory stimulation is everywhere. The subtle notes sit beside the bold notes, each expressing itself.” — K. Florian Klemp

“The closest I’ll ever get to bacon for breakfast is a Blind Pig.” — Don Younger

“Beer. Now there’s a temporary solution.” — Homer Simpson

“Give my people plenty of beer, good beer, and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them.” — Queen Victoria, English Monarch, 1819-1901

“Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.” — Anonymous

“Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.” — Aesop

“They speak of my drinking, but never think of my thirst.” — Scottish proverb

“Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation.” — Benjamin Franklin

“An Irishman is the only man in the world who will step over the bodies of a dozen naked women to get to a bottle of stout.” — Anonymous

“A good beer is the host’s honor, a full glass is the guest’s enjoyment.” — German beer stein inscription

“If you drink you’ll die, if you don’t you’ll also die. Therefore drink!” — German beer stein inscription

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

“I once shook hands with Pat Boone and my whole right side sobered up.” — Dean Martin

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

“And thou shalt give to me health, life, long existence, and prolonged reign, endurance to my every member, sight to my eyes, hearing to my ears, pleasure to my heart daily. And thou shalt give me beer until I am drunk. And thou shalt establish my issue as kings forever and ever.” — Pharaoh Ramses IV, Prayer to Osiris, 1200 BCE

“I formed a new group called Alcoholics-Unanimous. If you don’t feel like a drink, you ring another member and he comes over to persuade you.” — Richard Harris

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

“Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.” — Raymond Chandler

“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

“I know I’m drinking myself to a slow death, but then I’m in no hurry.” — Robert Benchley

“Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a particular brand of beer exactly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go to work in a brewery.” — H.L. Mencken

“We are here to drink beer … and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” — Charles Bukowski

“A ‘good’ beer is one that sells! You may think it sucks, but if the market embraces it, so be it. Now a ‘great’ beer or world-class beer is another matter…” — Jim Busch

“Drink Good Beer — Be Kind — Tell the Truth” — Motto at Flatlander’s Brewery

“Beer: So much more than just a breakfast drink.” — Whitstran Brewery sign

“Hoppiness is Happiness” — On the label of Victory’s Hop Wallop

“It only takes one drink to get me drunk, but I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or fourteenth.” — George Burns

“If I had to live my life over, I’d live over a saloon.” — W.C. Fields

“In more than 20 years of opening beers with guys, I have NEVER seen the Swedish Bikini Team show up. Almost always, the teams that show up in beer drinking situations consist of guys who have been playing league softball and smell like bus seats.” — Dave Barry

“We have already been too long subject to British prejudices. I use no porter or cheese in my family, but such as is made in America; both these articles may now be purchased of an excellent quality.” — George Washington

“You put the beer in the coconut and drink it all up. You put the beer in the coconut and throw the can away.” — Homer Simpson

“The last swallow of lager is the worst and the last swallow of an ale is the best.” — Anonymous

“To some it’s a six-pack, to me it’s a Support Group. Salvation in a can! — Dave “The Edge” Howell

“He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.” — Kingsley Amis

“Such power hath Beer. The heart which grief hath canker’d hath one unfailing remedy — the Tankard.” — Charles Stuart Calverley

“Wine is complicated, beer is complex.” — Brett Joyce

“The first beer calls for the third.” — Jamie Emmerson

“We should be drinking a beer every day.” — Tom Kehoe

“Beer needs baseball, and baseball needs beer — it has always been thus.” — Peter Richmond

“Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.” — Gore Vidal

“The first draught serveth for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, the fourth for madness.” — Sir Walter Raleigh

“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

“While you merely see the disease being viruses, I see the benign microorganisms which by making, among other things, strong beers… and enable you to spend your evening in alcoholic bliss.” — Patrick McGinley, 1978

“Beer will always have a definite role in the diet of an individual and can be considered a cog in the wheel of nutritional foods.” — Bruce Carlton

“The easiest way to spot a wanker in a pub is to look around and find who’s drinking a Corona with a slice of lemon in the neck.” — Warwick Franks

“Brewers enjoy working to make beer as much as drinking beer instead of working.” — Harold Rudolph

“Of doctors and medicines we have in plenty more than enough… what you may, for the Love of God, send is some large quantity of beer.” — Dispatch from the Colony of New South Wales, 1854

“Why is beer better than wine? Human feet are conspicuously absent from beer making.” — Steve Mirsky, Scientific American; May 2007

“The saxophone is the embodied spirit of beer.” — Arnold Bennett

“You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.” — Charles Baudelaire

“See God? That is the easiest thing in the world. He always appears to me in the bottom of the tenth glass of beer… and sometimes as a beautiful, young, female nude.” — Theologian Franz Bibfeldt, on the reality of visions

“This is an aggressive beer. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory — maybe something with a multimillion dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it’s made in a little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow beer will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think multimillion dollar ad campaigns make a beer taste better. Perhaps you are mouthing your words as you read this.” — Stone’s Arrogant Bastard

“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer.” — Clement Freud

“I stopped drinking, but only when I sleep.” — George Best

“I am as drunk as a lord, but then, I am one, so what does it matter?” — Bertrand Russell

“Intoxicated /adj./ When you feel sophisticated without being able to pronounce it.” — Anonymous

“I think hangovers are the body’s way of telling us we didn’t drink enough to still be drunk when we woke up the next day.” — Tidewater Joe

“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.” — Charles Bukowski

“Writing is a lonely job, unless you’re a drinker, in which case you always have a friend within reach.” — Emilio Estevez

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” — George Bernard Shaw

“A drunken man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.” — Anonymous

“Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die.” — Imhotep, 2667-2648 BCE

“An alcoholic has been lightly defined as a man who drinks more than his own doctor.” — Alvan L. Barach

“People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.” — Ann Landers

“He that drinks fast, pays slow.” — Benjamin Franklin

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

“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.” — Drew Carey

“Things don’t make me nearly as happy as talking and having a beer with my friends. And that’s something everyone can do.” — Drew Carey

“One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough.” — Edward Burke

“A man is a fool is he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn’t afterward.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

“My nerves could use a drink.” — Grace Kelly, in To Catch a Thief

“If your doctor warns that you have to watch your drinking, find a bar with a mirror.” — John Mooney

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

“A bottle of beer contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.” — Louis Pasteur

“Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.” — Mark Twain

“I can’t die until the government finds a safe place to bury my liver.” — Phil Harris

“If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.” — Samuel Butler

“I know the truth is in between the 1st and 40th drink.” — Tori Amos

“I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.” — W.C. Fields

“The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” — William Blake

“I have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.” — Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“You can’t seriously want to ban alcohol. It tastes great, makes women appear more attractive, and makes a person virtually invulnerable to criticism.” — Mayor Quimby, on The Simpsons

“Smithers, this beer isn’t working, I don’t feel any younger or funkier.” — Mr. Burns, on The Simpsons

“Ah beer, my one weakness. My Achilles heel if you will.” — Homer Simpson

“Homer no function beer well without.” — Homer Simpson

“Beer. If you can’t taste it, why bother!” — Anonymous

“Draft beer, not people.” — Anonymous

“If I saved all the money I’ve spent on beer, I’d spend it on beer.” — Anonymous

“Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains
With grammar, and nonsense, and learning,
Good beer and liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives genius a better discerning.”
— Oliver Goldsmith, 1728–1774

“My problem with most athletic challenges is training. I’m lazy and find that workouts cut into my drinking time.” — Tim Cahill, in A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg

“Then trust me, there’s nothing like drinking
So pleasant this side of the grave;
It keeps the unhappy from thinking,
And makes e’en the valiant more brave.”
— Charles Didbin

“Alcohol is necessary for a man so that he can have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed by the facts.” — Finley Peter Dunne

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

“We – Bee and I — live by the quaffing
‘Tisn’t all Hock — with us —
Life has its Ale.”
— Emily Dickinson, 1861

“I am AWOL,” said Pig. He closed his eyes. Fu came back with beer. “Oh boy, yeah” said Pig. “I smell Ballantine.” / “Pig has this remarkably acute nose,” Fu said, putting an opened quart of Ballantine into Pig’s fist, which looked like a badger with pituitary trouble. “I have never known him to guess wrong.” — Thomas Pynchon, in V; 1963

“For a moment, Trina stood looking at him as he lay thus, prone, inert, half dressed, and stupefied with the heat of the room, the steam beer, and the fumes of the cheap tobacco.” — Frank Norris, in McTeague: Story of San Francisco, 1899

“”Would you like some ice tea?” she asks. “Unless you’ve got a bottle of beer that’s not working.” — Raymond Chandler, in Double Indemnity, 1944

“Just give me some beer and the road and I’m together!” — S. Clay Wilson

“As to Squire Western, he was seldom out of the sick-room… Nay, he would sometimes retire hither to take his beer, and it was not without difficulty that he was prevented from forcing Jones to take his beer too; for no quack ever held his nostrum to be a more general panacea than he did this; which, he said, have more virtue in it than was in all the physic in an apothecary’s shop.” — Henry Fielding, in Tom Jones, 1749

“The soldiers… had a saying, that the Quakers used the word “tired” in place of the word “drunk.” Whether any of them do ever get tired themselves, I know not; but at any rate, they most resolutely set their faces against the common use of spirits… and I am very happy to know, that beer is, every day, becoming more and more fashionable… I was pleased to see excellent beer in clean and nice pewter pots. Beer does not kill. It does not take the color from the cheek. It will make men tired, indeed, by midnight; but it does not make them half dead in the morning.” — William Cobbett, A Year’s Residence in America, 1818

“Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, which, it was allowed, would be better; clear and thin, but strong and stringent as the cedar-sap. It was as if we sucked at the very teats of Nature’s pine-clad bosom in these parts… the topmost, most fantastic, and spiciest sprays of the primitive wood, and whatever invigorating and stringent gum or essence it afforded steeped and dissolved in it, — 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, writing about spruce beer in The Maine Woods, 1846

“Go and seek nature in some quiet, secluded place, and forget everything for a fortnight or two except your clothes and a half dozen cases of beer. Rest! Nature! Beer!” — James Oliver Curwood, in Flower of the North, 1912

“Crabs will be on the table, mountain high, and there will be some of the best beer you ever tasted. This brew, indeed, almost makes me weep. It is the noblest, by far, ever broached in my house — a full-bodied semi-Dunkles, not too bitter and yet not too sweet, running about 5% of ethyl alcohol by volume. I shall reserve 30 bottles for you.” — H.L. Mencken, in a letter to a friend

“This seems to be the era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements. Consider the beer can. It was beautiful — as beautiful as the clothespin, as inevitable as the wine bottle, as dignified and reassuring as the fire hydrant. A tranquil cylinder of delightfully resonant metal, it could be opened in an instant, requiring only the application of a handy gadget freely dispensed by every grocer. Who can forget the small, symmetrical thrill of those two triangular punctures, the dainty piff, the little crest of suds that foamed eagerly in the exultation of release?” — John Updike, in The Beer Can, 1964

“My no-fail prescription for personal and political health is to take a vitamin E capsule once a day, an evening constitutional, [and] at least a couple of twelve-ounce elbow bends.” — Jim Hightower

“Treat our beer like the family dog — keep it comfortable and out of extreme heat or cold, except when taking it out to play.” — Printed on Western Reserve Brewing’s 6-packs

“The Horse and Mule live thirty years,
Yet know nothing of wines and beers…
But sinful, Ginful, beer soaked man,
Survives three score years and ten.
— Anonymous

“I’m off for a quiet pint — followed by fifteen noisy ones.” — Gareth Chilcott

“There is nothing for a case of nerves like a case of beer.” — Joan Goldstein

“Never ask for ‘a beer.'” — Michael Jackson

“The only thing worse than a brewery without malt is a pub without beer.” — Anonymous

“No free woman should be allowed any more than one maid to follow her, unless she was drunk.” — Zaleucus, 7th century BCE Greek law

“You know what ‘SOBER’ stands for ? It stands for ‘Son Of a Bitch, Everything’s Real!'” — Gary Busey

“Belgian beers are God’s gift to mankind.” — Anonymous

“It never rains in the brewhall.” — Old German saying

“The Germans have the best malt character. The British brew with admirable subtlety and gracefulness. The Belgians are masters of complexity. Americans express hops better than anyone. The Italians incorporate their local food traditions. Fortunately we don’t have to choose just one country. That’s what makes the U.S. the most exciting place in the world to drink beer.” — Garrett Oliver

“We often let time pass by without making any real use of it. Instead, look at your day, and ask yourself, ‘What would I really enjoy? What would I like to do? Whom would I like to be with?'” — Garrett Oliver

“Take two ounces of hops, and boil them, three or four hours, in three or four pailfuls of water; and then scald two quarts of molasses in the liquor, and then turn it off into a clean half-barrel, boiling hot; then fill it up with cold water; before it is quite full, put in your yeast to work it; the next day you will have agreeable, wholesome small beer, that will not fill with wind, as that which is brewed from malt or bran; and it will keep good till it is all drank out.” — American Economical Housekeeper, 1850

“This is the age of beer.” — Roger Protz

“We may not know who is craft beer but we sure as hell will know what is craft beer by who isn’t.” — Alan McLeod

“O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!” — William Shakespeare, Othello

“Beerlanthropy /noun/ Concern for the welfare and advancement of beer.” — Term coined by Bruisin’ Ales

“I fear the man who drinks water and so remembers this morning what the rest of us said last night.” — Greek proverb

“She came onto him like a slow movin’ cold front — His beer was warmer than the look in her eyes.” — John Hiatt

“If one intends to make beer from oats, it is prepared with hops.” — Hildegard of Bingen, 1067 (earliest written mention of hops in beer)

“An empty beer is an opportunity for another beer.” — Peter Cogan

“Beer was the driving force that led nomadic mankind into village life. It was this appetite for beer-making material that led to crop cultivation, permanent settlement and agriculture.” — Alan Eames

“Anyone can drink beer, but it takes intelligence to enjoy beer.” — Stephen Beaumont