What use to the herds the gifts of freedom?
The scourge, and a yoke with tinkling bells
— this is their heritage, bequeathed to every generation.
—Alexander Pushkin
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!
—Alfred Lord Tennyson
[M]edicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
—John Keating in Dead Poets Society