Humor & Life Quote by W. C. Fields

Fields turns a basic human need into a punchline about priorities, then twists the knife with that offhand qualifier: "except drink". The line works because it’s built like a sincere testimonial - sleep as "the most beautiful experience in life" - and then instantly reveals the speaker’s real religion. It’s mock-poetic, then abruptly transactional. Beauty, in Fields’ world, isn’t transcendence; it’s relief. Unconsciousness is paradise, but intoxication still wins the popularity contest.

The intent is less to glorify alcohol than to lampoon a certain kind of self-mythologizing American hedonist: the guy who talks like a romantic and lives like a hustler. Fields’ screen persona was famously sour, combative, and perpetually inconvenienced by decency. This joke is that persona distilled: even the sweetest thing gets ranked, and the ranking system is crooked. Sleep becomes a kind of acceptable vice, a way to confess weakness while sounding profound. Then "drink" crashes the sermon like a bar tab slapped on an altar.

Context matters: Fields came up in vaudeville and peaked in an era when Prohibition and its aftermath made alcohol a cultural obsession - criminalized, fetishized, then normalized again. Jokes about drinking carried a little danger, a little defiance, and a lot of familiarity. The subtext is a shrug at self-improvement culture before it had that name. Why pretend you’re aiming for enlightenment when you can aim for oblivion? Fields isn’t arguing; he’s winking at anyone who’s ever wanted to opt out, just for the night.