It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present. Antonin Artaud
Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium! Thomas De Quincey
Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death. Jean Cocteau
Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium. Thomas Sydenham