C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Wine
Good wine needs no bush.
There is a devil in every berry of the grape.
Wine has drowned more than the sea.
Wine is a cunning wrestler.
Wine and youth are fire upon fire.
Wine is a turncoat; first a friend, and then an enemy.
Wine invents nothing; it only tattles.
O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee—devil!
That is a treacherous friend against whom you must always be on your guard. Such a friend is wine.
Wine maketh the hand quivering, the eye watery, the night unquiet, lewd dreams, a stinking breath in the morning, and an utter forgetfulness of all things.
Taking our stand on the immovable rock of Christ’s character we risk nothing in saying that the wine of miracle answered to the wine of nature, and was not intoxicating. No counter proof can equal the force of that drawn from His attributes. It is an indecency and a calumny to impute to Christ conduct which requires apology.
Wine is an abomination.
Wine maketh a man act like an ass in a rich pasture.
Drinking of wine maketh men to act like so many furies.
The blood that is once inflamed with wine is apt to boil with rage.
Wine makes a poor man rich in imagination, a rich man poor in reality.
Wine intoxicates for a time, but the end is bitterness.
Wine, though it possesses good qualities, was forbidden by the prophet, because it attacked reason.
This is the great fault in wine; it first trips up the feet, it is a cunning wrestler.
Wine often turns the good-natured man into an idiot and the choleric into an assassin.
When asked what kind of wine he liked to drink he replied, “That which longs to another.”
Wine and other luxuries have a tendency to enervate the mind and make men less brave in battle.
Wine leads to folly, making even the wise to laugh immoderately, to dance, and to utter what had better have been kept silent.
Wine takes away reason, engenders insanity, leads to thousands of crimes, and imposes such an enormous expense on nations.
The use of wine must inevitably be a stepping-stone to that of stronger drink and to intemperance.
In my interview with the king of the French, he stated expressly that the drunkenness of France was occasioned by wine.
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright; at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
It (wine) produces most of the bad effects of ardent spirits, as misused in our country, and is perhaps more insidious.
Of all things known to mortals wine is the most powerful and effectual for exciting and inflaming the passions of mankind, being common fuel to them all.
The wine-shops breed, in physical atmosphere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution.
There is never the body of a man, how strong and stout soever, if it be troubled and inflamed, but will take more harm and offense by wine being poured into it.
Where there is a wine-shop, there are the elements of disease and the frightful source of all that is at enmity with the interests of the workmen.
Drinking of wine brings poverty, shame, quarrels; leads to calumnious talk, unchastity, murder, and the loss of freedom, of honor, of understanding.
The sluices of the grog-shop are fed from the wine-glasses in the parlor, and there is a lineal descent from the gentleman who hiccoughs at his elegant dinner-table to the sot who makes a bed of the gutter.
From extensive acquaintance with many lands, I unhesitatingly affirm that everywhere God has provided pure water for man, and that the wines drunk are often miserable and dirty. I have found water everywhere that I have traveled,—in China and India, Palestine and Egypt,—and everywhere water has been my beverage.
Thou shalt not drink wine of anything that will intoxicate.
Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine and men of strength to mingle strong drink.
All the crimes on earth do not destroy so much of the human race, nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.
Far from me be the gift of Bacchus—pernicious, inflaming wine, that weakens both body and mind.
If it is a small sacrifice to discontinue the use of wine, do it for the sake of others; if it is a great sacrifice, do it for your own sake.
I hold to the utter abandonment of the use as a beverage of distilled and fermented liquors of every sort, especially of wines, whether having much or little alcohol in them.
Light wines—nothing so treacherous. They inflame the brain like fire while melting on the palate like ice. All inhabitants of light-wine countries are quarrelsome.
The use of wine is quite superfluous to man. It is constantly followed by the expenditure of power. The drinker draws a bill on his health which must always be renewed.
Wine-drinking is the mother of all mischief, the root of crimes, the spring of vices, the whirlwind of the brain, the overthrow of the sense, the tempest of the tongue, the ruin of the body, the shame of life, the stain of honesty, and the plague and corruption of the soul.
Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.
You often hoar the remark that “there is no harm in a glass of wine per se.” Per se means by itself. Certainly there is no harm in a glass of wine by itself. Place a glass of wine on a shelf and let it remain there, and it is per se, and will harm no one. But if you take it from the shelf and turn it inside a man, then it is no longer per se.
Not only has Solomon, in his wisdom, pointed out the evils, which attend those who tarry long at the wine, but all the precepts and denunciators against drunkenness, all the details of the flagitious arts penetrated under its influence, which are recorded in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, are directed against the inordinate drinkers of wine.
Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders…. It is a species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals.
O ye princes and rulers, how exceeding strong is wine! It causeth all men to err that drink it; it maketh the mind of the king and the beggar to be all one, of the bondman and the freeman, of the poor man and of the rich; it turneth also every thought in jollity and mirth, so that a man remembereth neither sorrow nor debt; it changeth and elevateth the spirits, and enliveneth the heavy hearts of the miserable; it maketh a man forget his brethren, and draw his sword against his best friends.
Take special care that thou delight not in wine; for there never was any man who came to honor, or preferment that loved it; for it transformeth a man into a beast, decayeth health, poisoneth the breath, destroyeth natural heat, brings a man’s stomach to an artificial heat, deformeth the face, rotteth the teeth, and to conclude, maketh a man contemptible, soon old, and despised of all wise and worthy men; hated in thy servants, in thyself, and companions; for it is a bewitching and infectious vice.
Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.