Embracing the philosophy of "Carpe Diem," or "seize the day," reminds us to live fully in the present moment and make the most of every opportunity. In this collection of 85 inspiring Carpe Diem quotes, you'll find words that encourage courage, mindfulness, and a zest for life. Whether you need motivation to take a bold step or simply a reminder to appreciate today, these quotes will inspire you to embrace each day with passion and purpose.
1. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:34” - Anonymous
2. “Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.” - Albert Camus
3. “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.” - Erma Bombeck
4. “No day but today.” - Jonathan Larson
5. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” - Helen Keller
6. “Dream as if you will live forever; Live as if you will die today.” - James Dean
7. “Wake up and live” - Bob Marley
8. “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” - Pope John Paul II
9. “These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.” - Abigail Adams
10. “The future depends on what you do today.” - Mahatma Gandhi
11. “Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.” - Oprah Winfrey
12. “Nothing is worth more than this day.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
13. “If you don't take risks, you'll have a wasted soul.” - Drew Barrymore
14. “We are the change we have been waiting for.” - Barack Obama
15. “It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.” - George Harrison
16. “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.” - Benjamin Franklin
17. “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
18. “Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.” - Anthony Robbins
19. “Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.” - Walt Whitman
20. “Forever is composed of nows.” - Emily Dickinson
21. “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” - Mother Theresa
22. “Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity.Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.” - James Clavell
23. “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.” - Eckhart Tolle
24. “What part soever you take upon you, play that as well as you can and make the best of it.” - Sir Thomas More
25. “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” - Henry David Thoreau
26. “Why not just live in the moment, especially if it has a good beat?” - Goldie Hawn
27. “When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...” - Marcus Aurelius
28. “Do anything, but let it produce joy.” - Walt Whitman
29. “There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
30. “Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.” - Wendy Wasserstein
31. “I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.” - Groucho Marx
32. “Whether it is the best of times or the worst of times, it is the only time we have. ” - Art Buchwald
33. “I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.” - Rita Mae Brown
34. “Begin somewhere. You cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.” - Liz Smith
35. “I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.” - Dave Eggers
36. “If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.” - Thomas Merton
37. “BarterLife has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children's faces looking up Holding wonder like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell, Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms that hold, And for your spirit's still delight, Holy thoughts that star the night. Spend all you have for loveliness, Buy it and never count the cost; For one white singing hour of peace Count many a year of strife well lost, And for a breath of ecstasy Give all you have been, or could be.” - Sara Teasdale
38. “The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a [person] trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin'.” - Mary Daly
39. “There's more to life then living, so hold on.” - Todd Strasser
40. “Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.” - Ernest Hemingway
41. “The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.” - Leo Babauta
42. “Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.” - Eve Ensler
43. “Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.” - Andrew Marvell
44. “The trick is to enjoy life. Don't wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead.” - Marjorie Pay Hinckley
45. “And so taking the long way home through the market I slow my pace down. It doesn't come naturally. My legs are programmed to trot briskly and my arms to pump up and down like pistons, but I force myself to stroll past the stalls and pavement cafes. To enjoy just being somewhere, rather than rushing from somewhere, to somewhere. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, instead of my usual shallow breaths. I take a moment to just stop and look around me. And smile to myself.For the first time in a long time, I can, quite literally, smell the coffee.” - Alexandra Potter
46. “We are all dying, every moment that passes of every day. That is the inescapable truth of this existence. It is a truth that can paralyze us with fear, or one that can energize us with impatience, with the desire to explore and experience, with the hope- nay, the iron-will!- to find a memory in every action. To be alive, under sunshine, or starlight, in weather fair or stormy. To dance with every step, be they through gardens of flowers or through deep snows.” - R.A. Salvatore
47. “This moment is yours and yours alone! Take charge, seize this moment and allow it to propel you to the high levels of an empowered life. Allow upon this fertile moment to be planted the seeds of your happiness and success.” - Steve Maraboli
48. “Allow yourself to enjoy each happy moment in your life.” - Steve Maraboli
49. “The people we consider successful in our society are all people that seize every moment and make the best of each situation.” - Steve Maraboli
50. “We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.” - Che Guevara
51. “Don't count the days, make the days count.” - Muhammad Ali
52. “Rest in Peace?’ Why that phrase? That’s the most ridiculous phrase I’ve ever heard! You die, and they say ‘Rest in Peace!’ …Why would one need to ‘rest’ when they’re dead?! I spent thousands of years of world history resting. While Agamemnon was leading his ships to Troy, I was resting. While Ovid was seducing women at the chariot races, I was resting. While Jeanne d’Arc was hallucinating, I was resting. I wait until airplanes are scuttling across the sky to burst out onto the scene, and I’m only going to be here for a short while, so when I die, I certainly won’t need to rest again! Not while more adventures of the same kind are going on.” - Roman Payne
53. “You look ridiculous if you danceYou look ridiculous if you don't danceSo you might as welldance.” - Gertrude Stein
54. “Your hand can seize today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don’t waste this breath, if your heart isn’t crazy, since "the rest of your life" won’t last forever.” - Omar Khayyám
55. “Nobody is ready for death. If you ask Joe Blow on the street, he aint gonna tell you he thinks he'll live forever. But when the end is near you'll realize you've been believing that all along. It's like getting caught with your pants down. That's why you gotta live, little one. Yeah stop and smell them roses.” - Cristina Garcia
56. “Stop waiting for the perfect day or the perfect moment... Take THIS day, THIS moment and lead it to perfection.” - Steve Maraboli
57. “What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.” - Kazuo Ishiguro
58. “Each day gives the opportunity for you to be treated right, to feel worthy, and to be successful. It’s a choice you have to make, a faith you have to embrace, and a standard you have to set.” - Steve Maraboli
59. “Gratitude means to recognize the good in your life, be thankful for whatever you have, some people may not even have one of those things you consider precious to you (love, family, friends etc). Each day give thanks for the gift of life.You are blessed” - Pablo
60. “I want to take my rightful share of life by force, I want to give lavishly, I want love to flow from my heart, to ripen and bear fruit. There are many horizons that must be visited, fruit that must be plucked, books read, and white pages in the scrolls of life to be inscribed with vivid sentences in a bold hand.” - Tayeb Salih
61. “Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.” - Hans Christian Andersen
62. “You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye—and he was willing to bet, when it happened, you weren’t thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together. And, no doubt, how you wished you’d had more time. Even if you’d had centuries… When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch—when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had. No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given.” - J.R. Ward
63. “Little FlyThy summers play,My thoughtless handHas brush'd away.Am not IA fly like thee?Or art not thouA man like me?For I dance And drink & sing: Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength & breath: And the want Of thought is death; Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die” - William Blake
64. “Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering.” - Steve Maraboli
65. “Today is a new day. It's a day you have never seen before and will never see again. Stop telling yourself the 'same crap, different day' lie! How many days has that lie stolen from you? Seize the wonder and uniqueness of today! Recognize that throughout this beautiful day, you have an incredible amount of opportunities to move your life into the direction you want it to go.” - Steve Maraboli
66. “When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.” - A.W. Tozer
67. “Live, laugh, love for tomorrow in another day.” - Robert Gerus
68. “I'm fairly certain that YOLO is just Carpe Diem for stupid people.” - Jack Black
69. “People—especially men—don't always know what they want. You try, and if it doesn't work, then you may quit.” With a broken heart. As if she'd read her mind, Abuelita frowned and scolded, “Hearts mend, but lost chances are gone forever.” - Cherise Sinclair
70. “Seize the day, take hold of it, and make it whatever you want.” - Jessica Sorensen
71. “Death twitches my ear;'Live,' he says... 'I'm coming.” - Virgil
72. “Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.” - Marcus Aurelius
73. “At least I carpe'd that one diem.” - John Green
74. “All I want, oh dear friend of mine, is for you to go out with someone. Do something, even if it's not the magical, wonderful thing you had in mind. Don't sit around for one more second pining away for some fantasy that might never come along, because it might not even exist.” - Lauren Morrill
75. “Funny to think that every day you have ever lived is a yesterday, and you will never live one single tomorrow. But then again, every day is a today when you’re living it.” - Mik Everett
76. “If this was my forever, I didn't want to spend another second of it here.” - Sarah Dessen
77. “Well, it does make you realize that life, even at its longest, is still very short.” - Kaira Rouda
78. “Why always "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say "not yet"? ” - Norman Douglas
79. “But tomorrow my rain, so I'll follow the sun” - The Beatles
80. “Looking back on my life, I sigh. The caprice of youth goes with the wind, I’ve no regrets.” - Roman Payne
81. “Morrerei por excesso de vida jorrando vivências pelos ares.” - Filipe Russo
82. “Given that we can live only a small part of what there is in us -- what happens with the rest?” - Pascal Mercier
83. “I don’t know when my time on earth will be up; but I DO know that today, I am one day closer. You can bet I’m going to make this day count! Will you?” - Steve Maraboli
84. “Think, speak, and act. With age comes self-reproach: I might have done more. Therefore now do!” - Théophile Thoré
85. “When we realize the shortness of life, we begin to see the importance of making every moment count.” - Dillon Burroughs
