Life's Pleasures Quote by W. C. Fields

Fields turns a bland act of self-care into an industrial hazard. The joke works because it pretends to treat the human body like bad plumbing: water doesn’t hydrate you, it corrodes you. That absurd literalism is the engine of the line. It’s a deadpan misapplication of common sense, the kind of pseudo-practical logic that sounds tidy until you realize it’s unhinged. By framing water as “the stuff that rusts pipes,” he borrows the authority of everyday observation and swivels it toward a vice he wants to keep charming.

The specific intent is defensive misdirection. He’s not arguing for whiskey; he’s dodging judgment. In an era when temperance politics still haunted American culture, Fields made a career out of playing the elegant degenerate, the man whose appetites are too refined to apologize for. The line turns moral scrutiny into a technicality: if water is dangerous, abstinence becomes irrational. It’s a comedian’s loophole, delivered with the confidence of someone who knows confidence is half the proof.

Subtext: the adult world is full of sanctimony, and Fields refuses to be corrected by it. He also invites the audience to join him in that refusal, to laugh at the pieties of “responsible living” without having to confess anything personal. The genius is that the joke flatters the listener’s intelligence while lowering the stakes. You’re not endorsing alcoholism; you’re applauding a perfectly engineered excuse.