One should be always drunk. That is all, the whole question. In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time, which is breaking your shoulders and bearing you to earth, you must be drunk without cease.
But drunk on what? On wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a moat, in the dull solitude of your chamber, you awake with your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, the wave, the star, the clock, of everything that flies, sobs, rolls, sings, talks, what is the hour? and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer, "It is the hour to get drunk!" Not to be the martyred slave of Time, get drunk; get drunk unceasingly. Wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose.
FROM A JOURNAL
I swear to myself henceforth to adopt the following rules as the everlasting rules of my life.... To pray every morning to God, the Fountain of all strength and of all justice; to my father, to Mariette, and to Poe. To pray to them to give me necessary strength to accomplish all my tasks, and to grant my mother a life long enough to enjoy my reformation. To work all day, or at least as long as my strength lasts. To trust to God--that is to say, to Justice itself--for the success of my projects. To pray again every evening to God to ask Him for life and strength, for my mother and myself. To divide all my earnings into four parts--one for my daily expenses, one for my creditors, one for my friends, and one for my mother. To keep to principles of strict sobriety, and to banish all and every stimulant.