Dead Poets Quotes

Seize the day. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die. ~ Robin Williams

When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think ~ Tom Schulman

I will read long books and the journals of dead writers. I will feel closer to them than I ever felt to people I used to know before I withdrew from the world. It will be sweet and cool this friendship of mine with dead poets, for I won't have to touch them or answer their questions. They will talk to me and not expect me to answer. And I'll get sleepy listening to their voices explaining the mysteries to me. I'll fall asleep with the book still in my fingers, and it will rain. ~ Tennessee Williams

Please welcome Professor Varen Nethers, famous depressed dead poets historian and author of the bestselling books Unlocking your Poe-tential: A Writer's Guide, and Mo Poe Fo Yo: When You Just Can't Get Enough. ~ Kelly Creagh

O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head, Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill? ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The meek may inherit the earth, but they don't get in to Harvard. ~ Robin Williams

Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone. ~ Robin Williams

I think 'Dead Poets' was probably my favorite, just to get started with the idea of doing a movie that people treated as more than a movie. ~ Robin Williams

TODD: Well, listen, Neil. I-I appreciate this concern, but I-I'm not like you.All right? You, you, you say things and people listen. I'm, I'm not like that.
NEIL: Don't you think you could be?
TODD: No! I--I, I don't know, but that's not the point. The, the, the point is that there's nothing you can do about it, so you can just butt out. I can take care of myself just fine. All right?
NEIL: No.
TODD: What do you mean, "no"?
NEIL: No. ~ Tom Schulman

When I did a study of all the coming-of-age movies that meant a lot to me, whether it was 'The Graduate' or 'Rebel Without a Cause' or 'Dead Poet's Society,' they all had that timeless feel. None of them were completely married to the details of their age. They felt timeless in their treatment of it. That's what made them resonate with me. ~ Stephen Chbosky

Let me dispel a few rumors so they don't fester into facts. ~ Tom Schulman

We're not laughing at you - we're laughing near you ~ Robin Williams

Oh captain my captain ~ Walt Whitman

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life ~ Henry David Thoreau

Boys, you must strive to find your own voice, because the longer you wait to begin the less likely you are to find it at all. ~ Robin Williams

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for. ~ Walt Whitman

Her poetry is written on the ghost of trees, whispered on the lips of lovers.
As a little girl, she would drift in and out of libraries filled with dead poets and their musky scent. She held them in her hands and breathed them in
wanting so much to be part of their world ...
It was on her sixteenth birthday that she first fell in love. With a boy who brought her red roses and white lies. When he broke her heart, she cried for days.
Then hopeful, she sat with a pen in her hand, poised over the blank white sheet, but it refused to draw blood ...
She learned too late that poets are among the damned, cursed to commiserate over their loss, to reach with outstretched hands
hands that will never know the weight of what they seek. ~ Lang Leav

We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity. ~ T. S. Eliot

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. ~ Antonin Artaud

But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'twas always thus and always thus will be. ~ N.H. Kleinbaum

Mr. Anderson thinks that everything inside of him is worthless and embarrassing. Isn't that right, Todd? And that's your worse fear. ~ Tom Schulman

I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself. ~ Robin Williams

Truth like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold screenwriter of Dead Poets' Society. ~ Tom Schulman

That's not a grenade, is it?" Christabel whispered.
"Probably," I whispered back. "The have this awesome storage room full of cool stuff like that."
"Grenades are cool?" She looked dubious.
"Cooler than dead poets," I teased.
"Hey," both she and Logan said at the same time. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

She's in my arms, so sweet and vulnerable and yet so strong, determined and everything I want with every fibre of my being.
Clary is spirited, smart, funny, stubborn and adorably nerdy. She isn't a cool girl, always worried about her looks and hanging out with the cool crowd and being mean and putting people down in order to shine brighter.
She is caring and courageous, she's pretty and witty and doesn't even know how sexy she is when she moves, when she smiles, when she lifts her bright eyes from a big book.
She'll quote dead poets and vintage 90s tv shows, she'll tell you what she wants without trying to manipulate you into doing her bidding, she'll tie you to her by setting you free, she will love you or hate you for who you are and not for who you appear to be.
J. ~ Melissa Adams

No one lets dead poets lie in peace. We are like old meat on a crowded dinner table. ~ Steven Erikson

Perhaps already I am dead, And these perhaps are phantoms vain; - These motley phantasies that pass At night through my disordered brain. Perhaps with ancient heathen shapes, Old faded gods, this brain is full; Who, for their most unholy rites, Have chosen a dead poet's skull ... ~ Heinrich Heine

I wanted to live deep and suck out the all the marrow of life ( ... ). ~ Henry David Thoreau

When I was ten, I spent a school holiday watching a lot of films: 'Dead Poets Society', 'Stand By Me', 'Home Alone' and 'The Goonies'. It completely inspired me. I told my parents I wanted to become an actor after that. ~ Russell Tovey

Sparta has no philosophers. That's because the job of a philosopher is to understand things better, which is a form of change, so they don't want it. Another difference: they don't honour living poets, only dead ones. Why? Because dead poets don't write anything new, but live ones do. A third difference: their education system is insanely harsh; ours is famously lax. Why? Because they don't want their kids to dare to question anything, so that they won't ever think of changing anything. How ~ David Deutsch

I want so badly to help you realize, Elizabeth Anne, how difficult and puzzling and full of wonder it all is: some day I will tell you how I learned to watch the shifting light of autumn days or smelled the earth through snow in March; how one winter morning God vanished from my life and how one summer evening I sat in a Ferris wheel, looking down on a man that hurt me badly; I will tell you how I once travelled to Rome and saw all the soldiers in that city of dead poets; I will tell you how I met your father outside a movie house in Toronto, and how you came to be. Perhaps that is where I will begin. On a winter afternoon when we turn the lights on early, or perhaps a summer day of leaves and sky, I will begin by conjugating the elemental verb. I am. You are. It is. ~ Richard B. Wright

Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the little magazines were kept; sometimes he'd buy one. Dead poets were his business, living ones his vice. Much of the stuff he read was crap and he knew it; still, it gave him an odd lift. Then there would be the occasional real poem, and he would catch his breath. Nothing else could drop him through space like that, then catch him; nothing else could peel him open. ~ Margaret Atwood

As the cards fluttered to earth, as everyone's hand was revealed as worthless, as every point won was shown to be a pointless charade, she would tell them how wonderful this other man was, and how if she didn't see him for another thirty years she would still love him, how she would still love him if he was dead until she was dead too. But instead she watched as Harry Robertson played the right bower, and he and Keith, who always played as partners, won the hand. ~ Richard Flanagan

If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great. ~ Brian Eno

Now, if you will excuse me, a dead woman is trying to convince me to drink something that comes in layers. ~ Seanan McGuire

Just look what happens to poets," I used to tell my honors class on the first day of school. "Half the time they go mad. And you know why I think that happens? Too much truth distilled to its essence, all surrounding evidence ignored or discarded. And I'm not faulting them for that. ~ Steve Yarbrough

I will probably die a misunderstood virgin like Ophelia in HAMLET, only I won't do it by floating down a stream, singing my own mad song. They'll just find me here, on my bed, on a weekend night, my dead body slumped over a homework assignment.
Hopefully they'll discover me before Teeny eats my remains. ~ Stephanie Wardrop

Twas now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards groan, and graves give up their dead,
And many a mischievous, enfranchised sprite
Had long since burst his bonds of stone or lead,
And hurried off, with schoolboy-like delight,
To play his pranks near some poor wretch's bed,
Sleeping, perhaps serenely as a porpoise,
Nor dreaming of this fiendish Habeas Corpus. ~ Thomas Ingoldsby

The NeXT purchase is too little too late. The Apple of the past was an innovative company that used software and hardware technology together to redefine the way people experienced computing. That Apple is already dead. Very adroit moves might be able to save the brand name. A company with the letters A-P-P-L-E in its name might survive, but it won't be the Apple of yore. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

The gods had been dead for fifteen years, after all, but their hate had lingered, and ruled in their stead. ~ Laini Taylor

I'm a man who believes that I died 20 years ago. And I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything. ~ Malcolm X

Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it; or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up; or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead; but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

We lose too soon, and only find delight
In withered husks of some dead memory. ~ Oscar Wilde

THE ARTIST

ONE evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image of THE PLEASURE THAT ABIDETH FOR A MOMENT.

And he went forth into the world to look for bronze. For he could think only in bronze.

But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor anywhere in the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save only the bronze of the image of THE SORROW THAT ENDURETH FOR EVER.

Now this image he had himself, and with his own hands, fashioned, and had set it on the tomb of the one thing he had loved in life.
On the tomb of the dead thing he had most loved had he set this image of his own fashioning, that it might serve as a sign of the love of man that dieth not, and a symbol of the sorrow of man that endureth for ever. And in the whole world there was no other bronze save the bronze of this image.

And he took the image he had fashioned, and set it in a great furnace, and gave it to the fire.

And out of the bronze of the image of THE SORROW THAT ENDURETH FOR EVER he fashioned an image of THE PLEASURE THAT ABIDETH FOR A MOMENT. ~ Oscar Wilde

He says the only people he ever really wants to meet for a drink somewhere are all either dead or unavailable. ~ J.D. Salinger

Sometimes the greatest love is not found in the dramatic scenes that poets and writers immortalize. Often, the greatest manifestations of love are the simple acts of kindness and caring we extend to those we meet along the path of life. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

There is a very, narrow, thinness of line between the living and the dead; actually, it's just a lack of a heartbeat away. ~ Wes Adamson

We are all dead men on leave. ~ Eugen Levine

Murder? You mean he's dead?"
"No. He's resting comfortably," I said. "People always sleep best with their heads at a ninety-degree angle. He looks comfortable, doesn't he?"
(Paige & Elena) ~ Kelley Armstrong

I hope people will like my novels after I'm dead. And I hope my children think about me in good ways, by and large. ~ Clyde Edgerton

To be always intending to make a new and better life but never to find time to set about it is as to put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to the next until you're dead. ~ Og Mandino

You can't keep secrets from the dead. - Wyatt ~ Dannika Dark

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint. ~ Edward Thomas

Stop the tape, cut the paper! I will just write another poem and grab a microphone and push record again! ~ Delano Johnson

They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy. They cannot leave this place; they are this place; and it should be left to them. They should not be denied nor forgotten, but neither should they be worshiped. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness… I think they drove your priestess Kossil mad a long time ago; I think she has prowled these caverns as she prowls the labyrinth of her own self, and now she cannot see the daylight any more. She tells you that the Nameless Ones are dead; only a lost soul, lost to truth, could believe that. They exist. But they are not your Masters. They never were. You are free, Tenar. You were taught to be a slave, but you have broken free. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

All the people saying mean things about me on the Internet are gonna be dead in four hundred and thirty-three days," she said, deadpan. ~ Neal Stephenson

Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of reach of sharks" "Yes, sir, of sharks and men. ~ Jules Verne

All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former. ~ James Madison

NOVEL, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination. The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes - some of which have a large sale. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I noticed that I used to go to second hand shops and flea markets and find funny, cute things, but now I go into those stores, and I think, This is dead people's stuff. This is all, like, somebody cleaned out their parents' house, and I don't want any of it. If I didn't want it from my parents, I don't want it from your parents. ~ Roz Chast

I'm sorry, Heather, but everything was not just fine before I got here. You know how I know that? Because you're dead. Okay? You are dead. Dead people don't have lockers, or best friends, or boyfriends. You know why? Because they're dead.-Suze Simon ~ Meg Cabot

I prate of ancient poets' monstrous lies,
Ne'er seen or now or then by human eyes. ~ Ovid

But the sky! The sky is blue. Its limpidness is not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless, formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of vapor!) ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

If you break this door you will find me dead on the threshold."
And be easy, madame, you shall be revenged," said Bussy. ~ Alexandre Dumas

An old friend will help you move. A good friend will help you move a dead body. ~ Jim Hayes

I'm certain, but my certainty is a lie.
To be certain is to not be seeing.
The day after tomorrow doesn't exist.
This is what exists:
A blue sky that's a bit hazy and some white clouds on the
horizon,
With a dark smudge underneath, as if they might turn black.
This is what today is,
And since for the time being today is everything, this is
everything.
I might be dead - who knows? - the day after tomorrow,
In which case the storm that will strike the day after
tomorrow
Will be a different storm than it would be if I hadn't died.
I realize that the storm doesn't fall from my eyes,
But if I'm no longer in this world, the world will be
different -
There will be one person less -
And the storm, falling in a different world, won't be the
same storm.
In any case, the storm that's going to fall will be the one
falling when it falls.

10 JULY 1930 ~ Fernando Pessoa

The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. There was never a time when you and I and all the kings gathered here have not existed and nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. ~ Anonymous

Am I supposed to feel so much awe and so on about the Godking? After all, he's just a man ... He's about fifty years old, and he's bald. And I'll bet he has to cut his toenails too like any other man. I know perfectly well he's a god, too. But what I think is, he'll be much godlier after he's dead. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Sometimes humans hit on a moment of profundity more complete than their dim minds could comprehend, and they took that nugget of truth and dumped it in the refuse for the bards and the poets to find, and mangle into yodeling paeans of love. ~ Kelley Armstrong

I had often marked the contrast between their almost ludicrous gaiety and my lonely existence, sometimes with scorn, sometimes with a feeling of deprivation. But never until today had I felt with as much calm and secret strength how little it mattered to me, how remote and dead this world was for me. ~ Hermann Hesse

Do this. Don't do that. Stay back in line. Where's tax receipt? Fill out form. Let's see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead - but first get permit. ~ Robert A. Heinlein