I love this quote uttered by the character Widget in The Night Circus. He credits it to Herr Thiessen but knows it is a literary quote by the another author. "Wine is bottled poetry
now
I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.
A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It
ascends me into the brain,... makes it apprehensive, quick,
forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.
What is better adapted than the festive use of wine in the first place to test and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is there cheaper or more innocent?
Marriage, from love, like vinegar from wine-- A sad, sour sober beverage--by time Is sharpened from its high celestial flavor Down to a very homely household savor.
Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda water the day after. Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication: Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk The hopes of all men, and of every nation; Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion: But to return--Get very drunk; and when You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then.