Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others… This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts. – Samuel Johnson
It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger. – Samuel Johnson
There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern… 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
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible. – Samuel Johnson
Life is a chaplet of little miseries, which the philosopher unstrings with a smile. Be philosophers as I am, gentlemen; sit down to the table and let us drink; nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin. – Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844), “Chapter XLVII: A Family Affair,”