Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.

Dr. Johnson's table-talk: aphorisms [&c.] selected and arranged from mr. Boswell's life of Johnson (ed. 1807)