Meaning
In Horace, the phrase is part of the longer Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero – "Seize the Day, putting as little trust as possible in the future", and the ode says that the future is unforeseen, and that instead one should scale back one's hopes to a brief future, and drink one's wine. This phrase is usually understood against Horace's Epicurean background.
Read more about this topic: Carpe Diem
Famous quotes containing the word meaning:
“Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity.”
—Walter Benjamin (18921940)
“I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.”
—Charles Dickens (18121870)
“These pictures of time;
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)