Let every emotion be capable of becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.

The aphorism urges an intensified mode of living: emotions and experiences should be felt so fully that they become “intoxicating,” like wine. The second sentence reframes intoxication as a function of appetite rather than substance—if even food cannot “make you drunk,” the deficiency lies in the eater’s hunger (desire, receptivity, need), not in the meal. Read this way, Gide is praising a cultivated capacity for ardor: to approach art, love, sensation, and even ordinary nourishment with such openness that they overwhelm the self. It also carries a warning: numbness and boredom are symptoms of insufficient desire, not of a barren world.