Opium Use Quotes

Confucianism strongly condemned the use of drugs like opium.

The thing about opium is that it makes pain or difficulty unimaginable.

It appears that the English think the Japanese... are fond of opium, and they want to bring it here also.

It wasn't so much all the sex that robbed me of my moral bearings, but all the narcotics. I must say, there's something about opium that goes very well with lesbianism.

There are no outdoor games in China, or indeed games except in a gambling sense. Absolute dullness and dreariness seem to prevail everywhere. As these two demons drive the Caucasian to drink, so they drive the Chinese to his opium….The Japanese to a man fear opium as we fear the cobra or the rattlesnake, and they despise its victims.

The Iranian government has become pretty open about the drug problem in recent years. Opium use is a very traditional, cultural thing in Iran, so the government is actually more open about it than they are about some of the other ills in society. They just don't want to talk about things that might relate to a Western lifestyle even though they know that Iranians indulge. Because there is no real public life left in Iran - people go and have dinner and then everything retreats behind these Persian walls.

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.

No opium is exposed for sale in the shops, probably because it is a contraband article, but it is used with tobacco in all parts of the Empire. The Chinese indeed consider the smoking of opium as one of the greatest luxuries, and if they are temperate in drinking, they are often excessive in the use of this drug.