Taylor

“We are the music makers And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lonely sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World losers and world forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world, forever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up with world’s great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire’s glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song’s measure Can trample an empire down. We in the ages lying, In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth.”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

“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. And 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. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

“We are the music makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lonely sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world, forever it seems.
With wonderful deathless Ditties
We build up with world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new son's measure
Can trample an empire down.
We in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth

And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul!

- W.E. Henley, s. 55-56”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. 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, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau