nunc est bibendum

"Running out into the summer rain with mouth wide open to catch the heavy raindrops; drinking milk from the ladle in the cowshed down on the farm during the long vacation; later in life, searching for truth in a wineglass - those are just a few of the stages in the evolution of a being.

To blame, of course, is that thirst which befalls poor mortals as soon as they see the light of day and which never lets up again afterwards. Feeling its intensity rise, our smallest contemporaries emit an appropriate acoustic signal (the primeval yell).

To blame too is the thirst for knowledge which fires our ingenuity in devising ever more thirst-quenchers (monks showing the way with holy glee)."

This appears to be a translation from the original German, on the Hotel Schloss Zell website. Marvellous, whatever language it originated in.. holy glee indeed.

Image from the inimitable Alex Waterhouse-Hayward.

Edit 2010: for some inscrutable reason this post shows up on the second page of results for Googling "nunc est bibendum translation": but I do not in fact provide a translation. Sorry folks. Here's a good one, from a Pharyngula comment: 

"Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus

Now is the time to drink, now the time to dance on the earth. Horace goes on to explain that there will be no drinking or dancing in the afterlife."