Daily Inspiration Quote by Bud Abbott

A Bud Abbott line like this lands because it turns the party into a ledger. The phrasing is almost vaudeville-simple, but the sting is adult: affection that depends on an open bar isn’t affection, it’s a tab. Abbott doesn’t dramatize betrayal with big language; he makes it sound like casual inventory-taking, the way you might notice the ice is gone or the bottles are empty. That understatement is the joke and the wound at once.

The intent is bluntly diagnostic. He’s not confessing loneliness so much as exposing a social economy where generosity is mistaken for personality. “So long as the liquor flowed” is doing the work: it casts hospitality as a pipeline, a steady supply line feeding other people’s good time. When it stops, the crowd evaporates. The subtext isn’t just “they used me,” but “I helped build the conditions for being used.” Abbott’s comic persona often operated in the space between straight man realism and slapstick absurdity; here, the realism wins. The laugh comes from recognition: everyone knows a version of this, the friend group that’s really a venue.

Context matters, too. Abbott came up through an entertainment world thick with nightlife, favors, and transactional camaraderie. In that ecosystem, popularity can be a temporary role you rent by picking up the check. The line doubles as a performer’s aside about fame itself: applause is loudest when the refreshments are free, and quietest when the bill arrives.