Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.

The line urges an ethic of presence: treat each moment as irreducibly new rather than as a repeat of what came before. “Do not prepare your joys” warns against premeditated happiness—planning, rehearsing, or stockpiling pleasures in ways that can dull spontaneity and turn living into anticipation. The emphasis falls on receptivity and immediacy: joy is something encountered and seized, not manufactured in advance. In a Gidean register, it also suggests suspicion of conventional scripts for fulfillment and a preference for experience that remains open, unpossessed, and unstandardized. The quote thus reads as a compact manifesto against deferred living and for attentive engagement with the present.