A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
But when I don't smoke I scarcely feel as if I'm living. I don't feel as if I'm living unless I'm killing myself.
I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.
I doused the fatal instrument with lightning promptitude, but it was a good seven minutes before the last indignant handkerchief had folded its wings and gone back to its reticule and the last manufactured cough died protestingly away.
I tried to stop smoking cigarettes by telling myself I just didn't want to smoke, but I didn't believe myself.
If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It's a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and foul. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you're alone or with friends, it's a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper? I love to touch the pack in my pocket, open it, savor the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the paper on my lips, the taste of tobacco on my tongue. I love to watch the flame spurt up, love to watch it come closer and closer, filling me with its warmth.
Much smoking kills live men and cures dead swine.
Now I'm being blamed not only for anorexia but for lung cancer. [On being a high-profile social smoker]
Pipe-smokers spend so much time cleaning, filling and fooling with their pipes, they don't have time to get into mischief.
Pull out a Monte Cristo at a dinner party and the political liberal turns into the nicotine fascist.
Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.
The best way to stop smoking is to carry wet matches.
The Germans are the most philosophic people in the world, and the greatest smokers: now I trace their philosophy to their smoking. Smoking has a sedative effect upon the nerves, and enables a man to bear the sorrows of this life (of which every one has his share) not only decently, but dignifiedly.
There are some circles in America where it seems to be more socially acceptable to carry a hand-gun than a packet of cigarettes.
There's nothing quite like tobacco: it's the passion of decent folk, and whoever lives without tobacco doesn't deserve to live.
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did, I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.
Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosophers stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'Tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.
We know [smoking tobacco] is not good for kids, but a lot of other things aren't good. Drinking's not good. Some would say milk's not good.
You know, it's cigarettes that killed (Jerry) Garcia. Everyone thinks it's heroin, but it wasn't. It was cigarettes.