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Favorite Trivia – SEIZE THE DAY (CARPE DIEM)
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| “Every morning just now I say to myself: today, not tomorrow, is the day you have to live, to be happy in… Live as though this day is your last of joy. ‘How obvious, if thought about’—yet it is just what we forget.”
Arnold Bennett (Journal) |
| “I feast on the moment.”
Virginia Woolf – A Moment’s Liberty: The Shorter Diary |
| “Don’t waste the week waiting for the weekend.”
Patty Martino Alspaugh |
| “Life is short; live it up.”
Nikita Krushchev |
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“Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Rubdiyat of Omar Khayyam – trans. by Edward Fitzgerald |
| “Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on the way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated pigbladders labeled Zest and Gusto. ”
Ray Bradbury – Zen in the Art of Writing |
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“Nothing can happen if you stay at home.” David Blum’s rationale for going out every evening (a mentor, co-worker) |
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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Anonymous |
| “If you can’t make the most of every moment, at least try.”
Patty Martino Alspaugh |
| “‘Cheer up!’ said the captain’s son. ‘Life is long; we are young.'”
Gustave Flaubert – Sentimental Education |
| “Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.”
Chesterfield |
| “Enjoy the present day, trusting very little to the morrow.”
Carmina (Odes) – Horace |
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“How delicious all this seemed! To be alive—thinking, seeing, enjoying, walking, eating—all quite apart from the amount of money in your purse or the prospects of a career. I revelled in the sensuous enjoyment of my animal existence.” [April 7, 1910]
W. N. P. Barbellion – The Journal of a Disappointed Man
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“We have to live with the certainty that we’ll get old and that it won’t look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it’s now that matters: to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength. Always remember that there’s a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That’s what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.” Paloma (Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery) |
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“I have coquetted with death for so long now, and endured such prodigious ill-health that my main idea when in a fair state of repair is to seize the passing moment and squeeze it dry. . . My purpose is to move about in this ramshackle, old curiosity shop of a world sampling existence.” [March 24, 1915]
W. N. P. Barbellion – The Journal of a Disappointed Man
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“I enjoy all the hours of life. Few persons have such susceptibility to pleasure.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Journals)
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“The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted and spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly managed past. . . I honestly feel that if I work every day, in a few years I will have begun publishing again. Writing sharpens life; life enriches writing. Ironically enough, I write best when I am happy, because I then have that saving sense of objectivity which is humor and artistic perspective. When I am sad, it becomes a one-dimensional diary. So a full, rich life is essential.” [January 17, 1956]
Sylvia Plath – Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963, ed. by Aurelia Schober Plath |
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“Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting, and if it is only nothingness that awaits us let us act so that it will be an injustice.” Etienne De Senancour, Obermann (Christopher Morley’s Book of Days for 1931 [November 12]) |
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“And if my ways are not as theirs A.E. Housman – from The Laws of God, The Laws of Man |
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“There was a man who would check the newspaper everyday to see if his name was in the obituaries—then he would sigh with relief and enjoy each day as though it were his first and his last.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Happiness |
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“Hurried and worried until we’re buried, and there’s no curtain call,
Life’s a very funny proposition, after all.” George M. Cohan
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“At sixty years old ’tis not well to postpone
E’en a moment that promises joy.” Desaugiers, Diner de Madelon, Sc II
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“I am sitting on a bench on the platform glancing at my watch. No sign of a train. I’m going to be late. A neat, anonymous man in a grey raincoat sits down next to me and says: ‘Why do you rush from place to place? Your face is tense, you are thin and worried, you are driving yourself into the ground. Remember you only live twice. I used to rush around like you and I worked myself into an early grave. Then I took stock of myself, and since I returned to earth I have maintained a steady course. I learnt my lesson.'” [August 26, 1977]
Ian Breakwell’s Diary 1964-1985
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“Inasmuch as all creatures that live on earth have mortal souls, and for neither great nor small is there escape from death, therefore, good sir, while you may, live happy amid joys; live mindful ever of how brief your time is!” [Satires, II. VI.]
Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. by H. Ruston Fairclough
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“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.” Thoreau
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“A man is not finished when he’s defeated; he’s finished when he quits.”
Richard M. Nixon
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“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
Albert Einstein
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“He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most.”
Samuel Butler – The Way of All Flesh
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“Do you count your birthdays thankfully? Do you forgive your friends? Do you grow gentler and better, as old age draws near? . . . If you know not how to live aright, make way for those who do. You have played enough, have eaten and drunk enough. ‘Tis time to quit the feasts . . .” [Epistles, II. II.]
Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. by H. Ruston Fairclough |
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“If you don’t strive Patty Martino Alspaugh |
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“Let yesterday go, seize today, and put as little trust as you can in tomorrow.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Enlightenment |