Dum vivimus vivamus is a Latin phrase that means “While we live, let us live”. It is often taken to be an epicurean declaration.
Emily Dickinson once used it in a letter written to William Howland:
“Sic transit gloria mundi*
How doth the busy bee,
Dum vivimus vivamus,
I stay my enemy!”
Portrait of Salvador Dalí, Philippe Halsman
One of the members of Jefferson Airplane by Jim Marshall
Still from Tommy (Ken Russell, 1975)
Michael Stipe, Mario Sorrenti for Interview Magazine, March 2011
Lady Gaga and model Rick Genest, still from Born This Way music video (Nick Night, 2011)
*Sic transit gloria mundi is a Latin phrase that means “Thus passes the glory of the world.” It has been interpreted as “Worldly things are fleeting.” It is possibly an adaptation of a phrase in Thomas à Kempis‘s 1418 work The Imitation of Christ: “O quam cito transit gloria mundi” (“How quickly the glory of the world passes away”).