Dead Poets Society

Medicine, law, banking—these are necessary to sustain life. But poetry, romance, love, beauty? These are what we stay alive for!

because no matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas have the power to change the world

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a flying:

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.”

“A woman is a cathedral, boys. Worship one at every chance you get,”

say—drivel! One reads poetry because he is a member of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion! Medicine, law, banking—these are necessary to sustain life. But poetry, romance, love, beauty? These are what we stay alive for!

“No, I’ve been calm all my life! If I don’t do something, it’s gonna kill me!”

Beside him his unsmiling father was stony eyed and silent, not acknowledging his son in the least.

“Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,

Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,

Hard as they were able,

Boom, boom, BOOM,

With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.

I could not turn from their revel in derision.

The Dead Poets Society met in the cave

“From ‘Ulysses,’ by Tennyson,”