Life's Pleasures Quote by Robert E. Lee

A confession disguised as a vow: Lee admits to desire, then immediately builds a wall around it. The line works because it’s not temperance as moral vanity; it’s temperance as self-knowledge. “I like whiskey” is plainspoken, almost companionable. “I always did” makes it lifelong, not a passing curiosity. Then the pivot lands like a snapped rein: “that is why I never drink it.” The logic is inverted but brutally coherent. Enjoyment isn’t a permission slip; it’s a risk assessment.

As a military man, Lee is speaking in the idiom of discipline, where the enemy is often not across the field but inside the self. The subtext isn’t that whiskey is evil; it’s that he is susceptible. That admission matters in a culture that prized stoicism and “command” as masculine virtue. He isn’t selling purity, he’s outlining strategy: identify your weak point, deny it the chance to become a breach.

There’s also a faint aristocratic austerity here, the nineteenth-century notion that restraint is a marker of character and leadership. Lee’s reputation, then and now, is tangled in mythmaking about honor and control. This line is myth-friendly: a tidy, quotable piece of self-command. It’s also quietly anxious. The sentence suggests someone who has run the thought experiment all the way to its likely end and decided that the only safe amount is none.

Contextually, whiskey was ordinary, not exotic; refusing it wasn’t trendy wellness, it was a deliberate posture. The quote’s intent is less sermon than warning: the things you like best can own you fastest.