Dig This

"youth ever grins scornfully at the wreckage of age"

"And here is another complaint I bring against John Barleycorn. It is these good fellows that he gets - the fellows with the fire and the go in them, who have bigness, and warmness, and the best of the human weaknesses. And John Barleycorn puts out the fire, and soddens the agility and, when he does not more immediately kill them or make maniacs of them, he coarsens and grossens them, twists and malforms them out of the original goodness and fineness of their natures.
 ............... Oh - and I speak out of later knowledge - heaven forefend me from the most of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke, drink, nor swear, nor do much of anything else that is brave, and resentful and stinging, because in their feeble fibers there has never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring.
 ...................And so I draw the indictment home to John Barleycorn. it is just these, the good fellows, the worth while, the fellows with the weakness of too much strength, too much spirit, too much fire and flame of fine devilishness that he solicits and ruins. Of course he ruins weaklings; but with them, the worst we breed, I am not here concerned. My concern is that it is so much of the best we breed whom John Barleycorn destroys."


From John Barleycorn - Alcoholic Memoirs - Jack London

(Editor's note: Lest you be confused, later in life Jack London was a big supporter of Prohibition.)