carpe diem

carpe diem, phrase used by the Roman poet Horace to express the idea that one should enjoy life while one can.

Carpe diem is part of Horace’s injunction “carpe diem quam minimum credula postero,” which appears in his Odes (I.11), published in 23 bce. It can be translated literally as “pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the next one.” The phrase carpe diem has come to stand for Horace’s entire injunction, and it is more widely known as “seize the day.”

This sentiment has been expressed in many literatures before and after Horace. It appears in ancient Greek literature, especially lyric poetry, and it intersects with the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus and what would come to be known as Epicureanism. In English literature it was a particular preoccupation of poets during the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the Cavalier poets, Robert Herrick expressed a sharp sense of carpe diem in the first stanza of “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” (included in Hesperides, published 1648):

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

Andrew Marvell, the most prominent of the Metaphysical poets, deployed the sentiment through a lover’s impatience in “To His Coy Mistress” (published posthumously in 1681). It begins with its speaker chiding the mistress of the poem’s title:

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.

But time is short, the poem continues, so

Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

The earliest known uses of carpe diem in print in English date to the early 19th century. Robert Frost took on the subject with his poem “Carpe Diem,” first published in 1938. In it children are encouraged by a figure called Age to “‘Be happy, happy, happy / And seize the day of pleasure.’” By the 21st century the phrase could be found in the names of catering companies, gyms, and educational travel organizations.