Quotes & Sayings About Being Sober

Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day. — Vaclav Havel

What is this thing you call substance abuse?
All I wanna do is forget and get loose.
Drinking and smoking over and over
What's so great about a life that's sober?
There's nothing cool about being young
When the monsters of night have stolen the sun.
I'm tired of searching for words in the sky.
All I wanna do is drink and die.
Nothing is real. It's all a big lie.
All I wanna do is drink and die.
There's nothing cool about being young
When the monsters of night have stolen the sun. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

witch. A being born a little different, he preferred to phrase it. He remembered reading something about the Rhine experiments, at Duke University. Some people, those sober scientists had proved, perceived the world with something beyond the ordinary physical senses. Some people, they had demonstrated, displayed a direct control over probability, without the use of any physical agency. — Jack Williamson

Semantics ... is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions of being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflict. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense — Alfred Tarski

I prefer being totally sober myself. — Aziz Ansari

I'm sure that being sober all these years accounts for my ill humor. — Fran Lebowitz

When the tribal groups of december trade
Seated in the figure of crocodile
And songs are sung and deals discussed, are made
Real. All ... For more than one reason they smile.
These codes are writ in secret, feeling fine
To keep what's private to my self since we
All must face our maker in our own ryhme
And reasons for being ( from regrets) free
So let the memory of your glory
Be the tenderness heartfelt love starkly
In the sky of my mind vast and pretty
Evermore glittering simplicity
Where in the truth of country grows sober
And sunshines through fog to radiate wonder — John Armstrong

On, I don't think I'm a genius!' cried Josie, growing calm and sober as she listened to the melodious voice and looked into the expressive face that filled her with confidence, so strong, sincere and kindly was it. 'I only want to find out if I have talent enough to go on, and after years of study be able to act well in any of the good plays people never tire of seeing. I don't expected to be a Mrs. Siddons or a Miss Cameron, much as I long to be; but it does seem as if I had something in me which can't come out in any way but this. When I act I'm perfectly happy. I seem to live, to be in my own world, and each new part is a new friend. I love Shakespeare, and am never tired of his splendid people. Of course I don't understand it all; but it's like being alone at night with the mountains and the stars, solemn and grand, and I try to imagine how it will look when the sun comes up, and all is glorious and clear to me. I can't see, but I feel the beauty, and long to express it. — Louisa May Alcott

They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous term, jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit, and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else; it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words. — W. Somerset Maugham

Haven't you heard of being hung, drawn, and quartered?"
Blue asked, "Is it as painful as conversations with Ronan?"
Gansey cast a glance over to Ronan, who was a small, indistinct form by the trees. Adam audibly swallowed a laugh.
"Depends on if Ronan is sober," Gansey answered.
Adam asked, "What is he doing, anyway?"
"Peeing."
"Trust Lynch to deface a place like this five minutes after getting here."
"Deface? Marking his territory."
"He must own more of Virginia than your father, then."
"I don't think he's ever used an indoor toilet, now that I consider it. — Maggie Stiefvater

The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.
-Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) US-English essayist, editor, anthologist — Logan Pearsall Smith

My heart had made its decision and there was no going back. Still, it was hard not to be all bitter and betrayed over his announcement. I didn't even have the luxury of being able to get blind rotten drunk. And believe me, dealing with all this sober sucked. — Kylie Scott

A house of stone and glass and iron should be stark and sober, a watchtower from which a benevolent guard is kept on society. But the white stone of this particular house rippled as if reacting to a hand that had found its most pleasurable contact. A notable newspaper critic had described this effect as being that of "a pernicious sensuality." And if that wasn't enough, the entire construction blushed a truly disgraceful peachy-pink at sunset and dawn. — Helen Oyeyemi

My alcoholism is in no way any sort of excuse for any of my past behaviors. Just because I quit drinking, my life was not suddenly transformed into a tabula rasa-if I have wronged someone, drunk or not, then the responsibility for this lies squarely with me. And I must do my best to set things square with that person. ...
....And just because I am sober now does not mean anyone else should care. I do not deserve a cookie for finally trying to act like a decent human being. — D. Randall Blythe

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I wandered into the kitchen with my beer cup still in hand. There was nothing worse than being alone at a party. Well, not true. Being alone and sober.

"Hey."

I turned and was actually happy to see Noah. At least I wouldn't be the lonely loser. "Hi."

He glanced at my still mostly full beer.

"I really hardly ever drink. My friend assumes if he puts a beer in my hand I'll drink it; if I don't, he does. I'm more or less his cupholder. — Renita Pizzitola

Being able to play tragedy for humor rather than pity is a new trick I've learned. For a long time that's what I did with my poetry, ask people to feel sorry for me. I got sober and I realized I have to get out of the pity thing; it's not going anywhere for me. I don't want to have any self-pity. — Bucky Sinister

Being sober on a bus is, like, totally different than being drunk on a bus. — Ozzy Osbourne

History repeated itself. The 'don't do the things I did' mantra was tiresome posh. The best way to make sure your children don't grow up as cunts is not to be one yourself - or not to let them SEE you being one. This is easier as a sober artist in Santa Barbara than as an alcoholic jailbird in Leith. — Irvine Welsh

Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according to an entirely different standard from that of the people of Packingtown; yet, strange as it may seem, he did a great deal less drinking than he had as a workingman. He had not the same provocations of exhaustion and hopelessness; he had now something to work for, to struggle for. He soon found that if he kept his wits about him, he would come upon new opportunities; and being naturally an active man, he not only kept sober himself, but helped to steady his friend, who was a good deal fonder of both wine and women than he. — Upton Sinclair

So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. — William Shakespeare

He summoned all his willpower and reined it in, promising himself he would drink just as much as he goddam wanted once he had his forty in - a pretty amazing number, when fifty percent of city cops retired after twenty-five and seventy percent after thirty. Only now that he has his forty, alcohol no longer interests him much. He forced himself to get drunk a few times, just to see if he could still do it, and he could, but being drunk turned out to be no better than being sober. Actually it was a little worse. — Stephen King

What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth. It's good for us when, in spite of all of the sober, pragmatic, and even correct arguments that war is sometimes necessary someone says: war is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being. — George Saunders

Being sober for so many years is getting interesting. — Peter O'Toole

I was drunk at five in the afternoon.

Luckily, we were in Las Vegas. I contemplated the fact that being drunk in Las Vegas was like being sober everywhere else in the world. So... normal. — Penny Reid

He sat there studiously bent over his work (Bill saw him), which lay in a slant of crisp white winterlight, his face sober and absorbed, knowing that to be a librarian was to come as close as any human being can to sitting in the peak-seat of eternity's engine. — Stephen King

Sleepy Christian, let me shout in thine ears: thou are sleeping while souls are being lost, sleeping while men are being damned, sleeping while hell is being peopled, sleeping while Christ is being dishonored, sleeping while the devil is grinning at thy sleepy face, sleeping while demons are dancing round thy slumbering carcass, and telling it in hell that a Christian is asleep. You will never catch the devil asleep; let not the devil catch you asleep. Watch, and be sober, that ye may be always up to do your duty. — Charles Spurgeon

do you believe
in the
death penalty?"
he asked her.

"you mean being
sober?"
she laughed. — Christopher Poindexter

If you think," he began, "that being sober and working steadily broke my bullshit meter, now you know better. I knew you were nailing Cross again from the moment you started back up."
Biting into my taco, I shot him a skeptical look.
"Eva honey, don't you think that if there were another man in New York who could bang it out all night like Cross, I would've found him by now? — Sylvia Day

Chance is a perfectly good word to describe mathematic possibilities, but it is only a word. It is not an entity. Chance is nothing. It has no power because it has no being; therefore, it can exercise no influence over anything. Yet, we have sophisticated scientists today who make sober statements declaring that the whole universe was created by chance. This is to say that nothing caused something, and there is no statement more anti-scientific than that. Everything has a cause, and the ultimate cause, as we have seen, is God. — R.C. Sproul

Just as the banqueteers are drunk from wine, the citizens are drunk from fears, hopes, desires, and aversions and are therefore in need of being ruled by a man who is sober. — Leo Strauss

As supportive as my hometown is, in my high school, there are people who would probably walk up to me and punch me in the face. There's a select few that will never like me. They don't like what I stand for. They don't like somebody who stands for being sober, who stands for anything happy. They're going to be negative no matter what. — Taylor Swift

The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. — James Madison

Such sober warnings in the Word of God should impress upon us the importance of keeping our priorities straight: God first, family second, ministry or career third. Only when a leader's relationship to God is right, and only when responsibilities as a family member are being properly met, can the leader be fully faithful in exercising the ministry God has given him or her. — John C. Maxwell

Having all those demons makes it interesting, for me. Coming back now and being completely sober is okay, but I do like going back into the messy area. It's an empowering thing to play now, but at the same time, I do like to play the dirty side more. So, we'll see if she slips, or something. Wendy is always on the edge. — Drea De Matteo

Having Tourette's is wild, like being drunk all the while. Being on Haldol is dull, makes one square and sober, and neither state is really free ... You 'normals', who have the right transmitters in the right places at the right times in your brains, have all feelings, all styles, available all the time
gravity, levity, whatever is appropriate. We Touretters don't: we are forced into levity by our Tourette's and forced into gravity when we take Haldol. You are free, you have a natural balance: we must make the best of an artificial balance. — Oliver Sacks

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be. — Paulo Coelho

You should really go inside now," he said.

Her glazed, unfocused stare was starting to clear, and the cranky look he was used to being levelled at him started to take shape. "And if I don't?"

"You want to fuck me on your doorstep?" he asked, his voice low and gravelly. "Call me tomorrow when you're sober. I'll be right over."

She jutted her chin defiantly - clearly pissed at him for trying to be the responsible one. "I won't need you after I've spent all night with a couple of multi-speed toyfriends and a box of batteries."

Linc shoved his hands on his hips, pushing back unhelpful images of her naked and pleasuring herself with a hot pink cock. "Go inside," he growled.

Before he did something crazy like offering to watch. — Amy Andrews

There is, in the early period of love, a measure of sheer relief at being able, at last, to reveal so much of what needed to be kept hidden for the sake of propriety. We can admit to not being as respectable or as sober, as even-keeled, or as "normal" as society believes. We can be childish, imaginative, wild, hopeful, cynical, fragile, and multiple; all of this our lover can understand and accept us for. At — Alain De Botton

I just got tired of being sick and tired and feeling down. Unfortunately, you don't realize this until you're getting sober but the reason why you're depressed all the time is it's the drugs that are depressing you. — Steven Adler

He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. — Oscar Wilde

I want blood! Two of Aksel's dogs cornered me near Tondara. They shot me. Those bastards actually shot a hole in my stabilizer the size of Mirala ... Aren't you going to say something? (Syn)
Were you hurt? (Nykyrian)
No. (Syn)
Then why are you having a fit? (Nykyrian)
I don't know, it just felt right. You see why I don't like being sober? I overreact like an old woman. (He opened his flask, then slammed it down on Nykyrian's desk.) Figures the damned thing would be empty. (Syn) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You need to just fuck already. Get it over with before you kill each other."

"Ah, always the romantic, Emmy," Joey says.

"I'm so serious," she drawls in a drunken slur. "I don't know why you didn't pull the trigger last night, girl."

"I tried!" I say. "But now he says I have to be sober if I want to hook up with him, and being sober on the road is for pussies."

"Hey, pussies are tough," she says. "You should've seen the thrashing mine took last night."

"Nope," I say. "No thank you. — Mercy Brown

As with most habitual drinkers, he was a nice enough, regular-if-not-exactly-sharp kind of guy when sober. Everyone thought of him as a nice-enough, regular-if-not-exactly-sharp kind of guy. He thought so too. That's why he drank. Because it seemed that with alcohol in his system, he could more fully embody this idea of being that kind of guy. — Haruki Murakami

It's all right if this part of your journey is not pleasant. Part of your repatterning is learning to be with unpleasantness in a healthy way. The mature and sober person knows that on some days things simply feel rotten, and that is okay. You are learning to move through distress by simply being with it, without the need to overeat or to act out in any other way. — Marianne Williamson

The horrible thing about being sober is you lose your excuse for being so fucked up. — Augusten Burroughs

There never was a man of solid understanding, whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensive inspection advised, but that he hath found by an irresistible necessity one true God and everlasting being. — Walter Raleigh

A sane accusation can be refuted. An insane accusation, one that makes no sense on any level, cannot be refuted, cannot even be addressed, because it is insolent nonsense. There is no sober way to defend oneself from the accusation of being a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater. — John C. Wright

All I know is that after 10 years of being sober, with huge support to express my pain and anger and shadow, the grief and tears didn't wash me away. They gave me my life back! They cleansed me, baptized me, hydrated the earth at my feet. They brought me home, to me, to the truth of me. — Anne Lamott

We were green: we ripened and grew golden.
The Sea terrified us: we learned how to drown.
Squat and earthbound, we unfolded huge wings.
We started sober: are love's startled drunkards.
You hide me in your cloak of nothingness
Reflect my ghost in your glass of being
I am nothing, yet appear: transparent dream
Where your eternity briefly trembles. — Rumi

The problem I've got is that I really, really like drugs. I love everything about them. It is horrific being sober all the time-utterly awful. — Sebastian Horsley

Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, "This ... this ... "; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos. — Paul Goodman

Not being a man of means, I knew that if I did not stay sober enough to earn money, I would run out of liquor. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Waking up sober is a good day. I love being able to wake up and do positive things, to go to the gym. — Rodney King

Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be ... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes ... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober - minded men. — Socrates

We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who take them with utter sober seriousness, the utter sober seriousness of right-wing parsons and political saviors, the owners of Pomeranians, are the liars who want to be believed, the novelists and poets, who know that the creatures they imagine have no other being than the sounding syllables which the reader will speak into his own weary and distracted head. There are no magic words. To say the words is magical enough. — William H Gass

I was somewhat drunk with what I had done. And I am always one to prefer being sober. — Gertrude Stein

All right, so we're also all fucked up. But hey, you think sober people aren't all fucked up? The world is being run by sober people - and it doesn't look like it's working out all that well. Just — Benjamin Alire Saenz