“Call things by their right names… Glass of brandy and water! That is the current but not the appropriate name: ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.”

—  Robert Hall

Gregory's Life of Hall, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin", Diogenes Laërtius, Pythagoras, vi. "A drunkard clasp his teeth and not undo 'em, To suffer wet damnation to run through 'em", Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Act iii, Scene 1.

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Robert Hall 15
British Baptist pastor 1764–1831

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