Intoxicant Quotes & Sayings

Anger is like an intoxicant; it reduces man and degrades him to the level of an animal. — Sathya Sai Baba

Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good. — Aldous Huxley

Pain is a poison; pleasure an intoxicant. — Kedar Joshi

I've always had this idea that if you're going to try something, if you're going to expend that first big block of effort and energy to participate - whether it's riding the Tour de France or applying for a new job or coaching your daughter's soccer team - you might as well go ahead and give whatever else it takes to win, I mean, I'm going to be there no matter what, right? Why not go ahead and get the victory? — Johan Bruyneel

5. Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society. — Thich Nhat Hanh

It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world. Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power, the lust for bloodshed. The longing for freedom takes the form of crushing the enemy- there is always the enemy!- into the earth; and where and who is the enemy if there is no visible establishment to attack, to destroy with blood and fire? Remember all that oratory when freedom is threatened again. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty. — Katherine Anne Porter

Inhaling fumes directly from burning foliage, either in a confined space such as a cave or a tent, or scooping up and breathing in the vapors from psychoactive plant materials scattered on a bowl full of hot coals, must be an extremely ancient practice. Herodotus's account from the fifth-century BCE, describing the use of small tents by the Scythians (a northwestern Iranian tribe) for inhaling the smoke of cannabis, is probably the most famous account that confirms the antiquity of the use of cannabis as a ritual intoxicant. — John Rush

Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity. — Katherine Anne Porter

What appears most disquieting to me in isolation is the dilemma of how to use time. There is either too much or too little of it; we either live inside painfully contracting horizons, or feel ourselves isolated in the vastness of space. I seem to have lived with the palm of my hand balanced on the tip of a knife, writing what in theory I would call the Preface to a Future Book. And the relation of time to creation should always appear like that, a ratio that describes the fullness of energy brought to a particular stage of one's life, so that each work is a preface to a stage at which one has still to arrive, the logical extension of which is death.
I live for the blaze of metaphor that unites incongruities. The red wine-stain on my page is like an intoxicant to the dance of words. It is a little ritual I undertake, this sprinkling of wine-spots on paper. — Jeremy Reed

That a starship could be built, that it could be propelled by laser beams, that humanity could reach the stars; this idea appeared to have been an intoxicant, to people around Saturn and on Earth in particular. — Kim Stanley Robinson

A noble birth and fortune, though they make not a bad man good, yet they are a real advantage to a worthy one and place his virtues in a fairer light. — George Lillo

The sound of dogs howling from the next homestead over. But the space between our houses grows while I sleep. The forest around me deepens. The trees fall in love and multiply. The snow an intoxicant. I pray the pines don't get bolder, that they don't grow organs and hands. — Stuart Dybek

Your state is not at all to be measured by the opposition that sin makes to you, but by the opposition you make to it. — John Owen

The pursuit of knowledge is an intoxicant, a lure that scientists and explorers have known from ancient times; indeed, exhilaration in the pursuit of knowledge is part of what has kept our species so adaptive. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Jude was the sickness I didn't want to be cured of. He was the intoxicant I never wanted to be clear of. — Nicole Williams

The Russians have a saying. Offer a man a finger, and he will take your hand - if not your arm. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

If one uses music that one does not really love, then one will not succeed in making it one's own. — Lukas Foss

We should live, my Lesbia, and love
And value all the talk of stricter
Old men at a single penny.
Suns can set and rise again;
For us, once our brief light has set,
There's one unending night for sleeping.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then still another thousand, then a hundred;
Then, when we've made many thousands,
We'll muddle them so as not to know
Or lest some villain overlook us
Knowing the total of our kisses.
(Translated by Guy Lee) — Catullus

The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them. — William S. Burroughs

The challenges we face in life are not meant to be some sort of punishment; rather, they are an invitation to change - and an opportunity to create something even better than before. — Sam Cawthorn

For him (LBJ) food was not an indulgence but and intoxicant, an object he reached for to fill a gaping void, one he could never fill up. — Jonathan Darman

Whatever comes to us in life we create first in our mentality. As the building is a reality in all its details in the architects mind before a stone or brick is laid, so we create mentally everything which later becomes a reality in our achievement. — Orison Swett Marden

Both the American and the European approaches to foreign policy were the products of their own unique circumstances. Americans inhabited a nearly empty continent shielded from predatory powers by two vast oceans and with weak countries as neighbors. Since America confronted no power in need of being balanced, it could hardly have occupied itself with the challenges of equilibrium even if its leaders had been seized by the bizarre notion of replicating European conditions amidst a people who had turned their backs on Europe. — Henry Kissinger

Success is an intoxicant, and intoxicated people seldom have a firm grasp on reality. — Andy Stanley

What it comes down to for me is that I'd rather us make bad decisions as a group, than to live in the absence of freedom. — Blake Crouch