“In a culture obsessed with hard work and career success, it can be difficult to wean ourselves off the work ethic. And we may not want to if we are engrossed in a career that is making us feel fully alive. But if we do seek the space to nurture other parts of who we are, then we might be wise to put our hopes in the virtues of simple living”

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“The most emotionally corrosive form of regret occurs when we fail to take action on something that matters deeply to us.”

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“The Rubáiyát was an unapologetic expression of hedonism, bringing to mind sensuous embraces in jasmine-filled gardens on balmy Arabian nights, accompanied by cups of cool, intoxicating wine. It was a passionate outcry against the unofficial Victorian ideologies of moderation, primness and self-control.”

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“For more than 2,000 years there has been a long war against pleasure... Carpe diem hedonism was far more than the pursuit of sensory pleasures: it was a subversive political act with the power to reshape the cultural landscape.”

from Carpe Diem Regained

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“The kind of hedonism popularized by the Rubáiyát can help to put us back in touch with the virtues of direct experience in our age where so much of daily life is filtered through the two-dimensional electronic flickers on a smartphone or tablet. We are becoming observers of life rather than participants, immersed in a society of the digital spectacle. Let us keep a copy of the Rubáiyát in our pockets, alongside the iPhone, and remember the words of wise Khayyám: ‘While you live Drink! – for, once dead, you never shall return.’”

from Carpe Diem Regained

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“recognizing the ephemeral nature of existence, and being able to look death in the eye or float on its ocean, is perhaps the most crucial ingredient of carpe diem living”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“When we make a conscious choice to seize the day, we are making a commitment to being active rather than passive beings, to pursuing our own path rather than one determined for us, to living in this moment rather than waiting for the next . And through that act of decision, we gain a sense of purpose by becoming the author of our own life.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“If there was a single thread running through the life of Angelou it was her carpe diem approach to living... She was an 'experimentalist', someone who viewed life as a smorgasbord of possibilities and experiences there for the tasting even when it involved risk and the prospect of failure.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“Occasionally post-traumatic growth happens on a mass scale. The Roaring Twenties, knows as a period of wild and exuberant living, flowed as a response to the hours of World War One... The result was an outbreak of carpe diem vitality, where grabbing new opportunities and live-for-the moment hedonism were the rule of the day.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“Life is not only full of individual moments of opportunity, but is itself a window of opportunity that flashes into existence just once and is there for the taking.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“There is nothing inherently wrong with playing roles, but it is important to notice when the roles start to play us... When such patterns of behavior become so ingrained that we don't even notice them, how authentic are we being in the various roles we play?”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“The Prince—the first ever handbook on opportunism—which advised rulers to 'learn how not to be virtuous' in order to maintain their power.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“'Robber Barons' who presided over an era of economic freewheeling and corruption that historians have referred to as 'bandit capitalism'... were seize-the-day opportunists who were perfectly prepared to lie, bribe, steal, exploit and bend the rules in order to amass their personal fortunes.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“Epicurus never advocated hedonism, believing that we should aim to free ourselves from bodily pain and mental anguish not through 'drinking and revels' but 'sober reasoning.' He was an ascetic... His standard diet was water and bread... and he was a strict celibate who believed sex should be avoided because it led to unhappy feelings such as jealousy”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“St. Augustine, the first intellectual superstar of Christian theology spent his early years 'in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures' and 'hellish pleasures', and fathered a son with a woman he never married and then abandoned... His formulation of the doctrine of original sin made clear that ever since Adam's fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, humankind had been corrupted by the filthy allures of lust.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“In 1532, the Holy Roman Emperor introduced a penal code that banned the use of contraceptive devices. The message was clear: you can no longer have sex for the fun of it. Half a millennium later, this kind of thinking remains at the root of the Catholic Church's official opposition to birth control”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“until mindfulness becomes more explicit in stressing an ethical vision, it will serve to sustain our culture of self-interest, or at least fail to mount any serious challenge to it.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“Especially in his twenties—before he was consumed by opium—Coleridge's greatest addiction was the natural world of mountains and valleys, woods and seas... Writer's such as Coleridge and Goethe not only created poetry our of the awe-inspiring sublime in nature; both of them also had a strong scientific bent.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“Carpe diem was not extinguished by Christianity alone... industrial capitalism... engulfed millions of workers in a more controlled and regimented way of life”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“Protestant ideals in the 16th and 17th centuries.. abolished carnivals and festivities, while thousands of laws were introduce to ban fairs and dances, sports and theater... happiness was not to be enjoyed in this life but was rather a reward granted by God to true believers in the next”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“men think about sex on average 34 times a day compared to 19 times for women— There may be no more intense or electrifying way of feeling fully alive than experiencing that most remarkable evolutionary gift: the orgasm.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“The pursuit of erotic pleasure has been a powerful force for social equality and cultural transformation [and]—perhaps surprisingly— the place to begin exploring this neglected virtue of sexual hedonism is... in the apparently prim and proper Victorian era... We love to depict the Victorians as prudish moralists who would blanche at the mention of sexual pleasure... but it is far from the truth.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“Human beings are prediction machines... Our lives are permeated by decision-making that requires projecting our minds forward in time and considering the consequence of our actions.”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“Seneca was a champion of moderation and self-control... His motto was unequivocal: 'nothing for pleasure's sake.'”

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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“The importance of choice as a route to a life of meaning was central to the thought of Viktor Frankl, one of the founders of existential psychotherapy in the 1940's. 'What is man?' he asked. 'He is being who continually decides what he is.'”

from Carpe Diem Regained

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“We can see our lives as a series of choices extnding through time with the potential to shape not just what we do but who we are.”

from Carpe Diem Regained

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“it is almost impossible to legislate away the desire for hedonistic pleasures. We are drawn to hedonism like moths to torchlight.”

from Carpe Diem Regained

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“The virtue of mindfulness is that it enables people to stop and listen to the music of their lives. It allows them to be immersed in the moments of their day and be seized by them.”

from Carpe Diem Regained

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“in the world of Generation Y people tend not to make definite arrangements when it comes to social life: decisions are made 'spontaneously' at the last moment. Maybe they'll come. Maybe they won't, especially if a better offer comes along. The instant text message has created an epidemic of non-commitment that masquerades as spontaneity.”

from Carpe Diem Regained

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“it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.”

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“Of course, the sexual liberation of women like... George Eliot didn't immediately usher in an era of women on top. It was the early beginnings of a long period of social struggle and cultural change”

from Carpe Diem Regained

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