Carpe Diem

Don't be fooled by the calendar.  There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.  ~Charles Richards


Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite.  Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance.  Everyone is just waiting.  ~Dr. Seuss


Enjoy yourself.  It's later than you think.  ~Chinese Proverb


Live every day as if it were your last and then some day you'll be right.  ~H.H. "Breaker" Morant


Go for it now.  The future is promised to no one.  ~Wayne Dyer


I have died so little today, friend, forgive me.  ~Thomas Lux


Every man dies.  Not every man really lives.  ~Braveheart


Do not take life too seriously.  You will never get out of it alive.  ~Elbert Hubbard


As you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the things you didn't do.  ~Zachary Scott


Spend the afternoon.  You can't take it with you.  ~Annie Dillard


Dream as if you'll live forever.  Live as if you'll die today.  ~James Dean


Why always "not yet"?  Do flowers in spring say "not yet"?  ~Norman Douglas


As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.  ~Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden, 1854


Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.  ~Stephen Vincent Benét


And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count.  It's the life in your years.  ~Abraham Lincoln


There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.  ~George Santayana, "War Shrines," Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies, 1922


For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life.  But there was always some obstacle in the way.  Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid.  Then life would begin.  At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.  ~Fr. Alfred D'Souza


Time! where didst thou those years inter
Which I have seene decease?
~William Habington


Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.  ~Scottish Proverb


I'm less interested in why we're here.  I'm wholly devoted to while we're here.  ~Erika Harris,

To always be intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it - this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed.  ~Walter Scott


I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see.  ~John Burroughs


Never forget that you must die; that death will come sooner than you expect... God has written the letters of death upon your hands.  In the inside of your hands you will see the letters M.M.  It means "Memento Mori" - remember you must die.  ~J. Furniss, Tracts for Spiritual Reading


There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back.  ~Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister


To change one's life:  Start immediately.  Do it flamboyantly.  No exceptions.  ~William James


Why must conversions always come so late?  Why do people always apologize to corpses?  ~David Brin


A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time.  ~Francis Bacon, Essays


You will never find time for anything.  If you want time you must make it.  ~Charles Buxton


Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.  ~Margaret Fuller


Death twitches my ear.  "Live," he says, "I am coming."  ~Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), Minor Poems, Copa


He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.  ~Sydney Smith


Fear not that life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.  ~John Henry Cardinal Newman


You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.  ~Ruth E. Renkl


You may delay, but time will not.  ~Benjamin Franklin


We cannot waste time.  We can only waste ourselves.  ~George M. Adams


How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  ~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life


I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.  ~Bernard Berenson


I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.  ~Tagore


Many people die with their music still in them.  Why is this so?  Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live.  Before they know it, time runs out.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Contemplation often makes life miserable.  We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.  ~Nicolas de Chamfort


I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour.  I dripped it carelessly, Ah!  I didn't know, I held opportunity.  ~Hazel Lee


Gather ye rose-buds while ye may;
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
~Robert Herrick


We die daily.  Happy those who daily come to life as well.  ~George MacDonald