“Carpe, carpe. Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”
“Sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean choking on the bone.”
‘O Captain, my Captain.’ Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It’s from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating, or if you’re slightly more daring, O Captain, my Captain.”
“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. Thoreau said, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Don’t be resigned to that. Break out!”
“When you read, don’t just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think.”
“But only in their dreams can man be truly free. ‘Twas always thus, and always thus will be.”
“Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way. Even though it may seem silly or wrong, you must try.”
“There’s a time for daring and there’s a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.”
“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”
“ And he human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, and engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”
That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. WHAT WILL YOUR VERSE BE?