Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question.
If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your
shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.
And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of
a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the
wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock,
of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what
hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: "It
is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred
slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with
virtue, as you will."