“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.”
Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1854; recited by the Dead Poets Society club
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Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying.
About this quote
Keating reads this to explain carpe diem, and the source is a 17th-century poem about wilting flowers. Same message, older anxiety.
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“O Captain! My Captain!”
Walt Whitman · Leaves of Grass, 1865; quoted throughout Dead Poets Society
“Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone.”
John Keating · Dead Poets Society, 1989
“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.”
John Keating · Dead Poets Society, 1989
“There's a time for daring and there's a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.”
John Keating · Dead Poets Society, 1989
“Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way.”
John Keating · Dead Poets Society, 1989
“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”
John Keating · Dead Poets Society, 1989
“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.”
John Keating · Dead Poets Society, 1989
“Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”
John Keating · Dead Poets Society, 1989
“The truth sat in the clay for a thousand years before anyone gave it a name.”
Original
“Measure the two sides you can see, and the one you fear is already accounted for.”
Original
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
Seneca · Letters to Lucilius
