“One must drop all presuppositions and dogmas and rules - for there only lead to stalemate or disaster; one must cease to regard all patients as replicas, and honor each one with individual reactions and propensities; and, in this way, with the patient as one's equal, one's co-explorer, not one's puppet, one may find therapeutic ways which are better than other ways, tactics which can be modified as occasion requires.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“As Sicknes is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sicknes, is solitude...Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itselfe.
-DONNE”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“We rationalize, we dissimilate, we pretend: we pretend that modern medicine is a rational science, all facts, no nonsense, and just what it seems. But we have only to tap its glossy veneer for it to split wide open, and reveal to us its roots and foundations, its old dark heart of metaphysics, mysticism, magic, and myth. Medicine is the oldest of the arts, and the oldest of the sciences: would one not expect it to spring from the deepest knowledge and feelings we have?”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“Diseases have a character of their own, but they also partake of our character; we have a character of our own, but we also partake of the world’s character: character is monadic or microcosmic, worlds within worlds within worlds, worlds which express worlds. The disease-the man-the world go together, and cannot be considered separately as things-in-themselves.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“from such abysses, from such severe sickness, one returns newborn, having shed one's skin … with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“Other worlds, other lives, even though so different from our own, have the power of arousing the sympathetic imagination, of awakening an intense and often creative resonance in others.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“there is no necessary dilution of reality in representation; quite the opposite, if the representation has power. Reality is conferred, re-conferred, by every original representation.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“there is a world of difference between complexity and anarchy. The weather is complex, it is not anarchic.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“Ci ricordano che siamo sovrasviluppati in fatto di competenza meccanica, ma manchiamo di intelligenza, intuizione, consapevolezza biologiche; ed è questo, soprattutto, che dobbiamo riguadagnare, non solamente in medicina, ma nella scienza in generale.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
“The structure of chaos is not static but dynamic;”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from Awakenings
Oliver Sacks
Born place: in London, The United Kingdom
Born date July 9, 1933
See more on GoodReads
“I feel like a goddess, jailed in her Olympus. Little wonder how the gods toyed with humans. Toyed with women, to watch them squirm, pollinate the seeds of despair; toyed with men, to satiate their Seven Deadly Sins.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Glass
“Put a thief among honest men and they will eventually relieve him of his watch.”
― Flann O'Brien, quote from At Swim-Two-Birds
“I don't trust an organization that would make policy out of fear.”
― Melissa de la Cruz, quote from The Van Alen Legacy
“Outside his office my father had a framed copy of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to his son’s teacher, translated into Pashto. It is a very beautiful letter, full of good advice. “Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books…But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside,” it says. “Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.”
― Malala Yousafzai, quote from I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
“Jest, i kod njega, kome je nekoć bila tako strana svaka sitničavost, razvila se neka vrsta pedanterije, premda je ta pedanterija imala svoj korijen u drugom tjelesnom ustrojistvu i rodila se iz drugačijeg raspoloženja.
Osjećao se praznim; nedostajao mu jeplan koji bi mu dao poticaja, neki zanimljiv posao kome bi se mogao s veseljem i zadovoljstvom posvetiti. Njegov nagon za djelatnošću, nesposobnost njegova duha da miruje, njegova aktivnost - bijahu oduvijek nešto posve drugo negoli prirodna i ustrajna volja za radom kod njegovih predaka: naime, nešto umjetno, impuls njegovih živaca, zapravo neko opojno sredstvo, baš kao male i oštre ruske cigarete koje je stalno pušio. Ta ga aktivnost nije napustila, njome je on vladao manje no ikada, ona je gospodarila njime i mučila ga, trošeći se na sijaset trica i ništavnosti. Gubio se u tisuću beznačajnih sitnica koje su se uglavnom odnosile na održavanje kuće i njegove toalete, a koje bi odlagao, jer su mu dojadile, te ih nije više mogao ni pamtiti, ni srediti, jer su ga stajale nerazmjerno mnogo pažnje i vremena.
Ono što su u gradu nazivali njegovom "taštinom" toliko se pogoršalo, da se već odavna počeo toga stideti, a ipak nije bio kadar okaniti se navika koje su se razvile u tom pravcu. Nije mogao napustiti kabinet sa sviješću da je nešto propustio ili samo površno obavio, jer se bojao da će mu izmaći onaj osjećaj svježine, mira, intaktnosti, koji ga je ipak napuštao poslije jednog sata, te ga je onda opet trebalo mukom obnoviti.
U kabinetu je provodio mnogo vremena, i to ne samo ujutro, već i prije svakog ručka, svake sjednice u senatu, svake javne skupštine, ukratko, uvijek pre no što će se pokazati pred ljudima i kretati se među njima.
Zaista! Život Thomasa Buddenbrooka pretvorio se u život glumca, i to takvog glumca kome je čitav život, do najmanje i najsvakodnevnije sitnice, postao samo velikom glumom koja ga stalno drži u napetosti i stalno iscrpljuje...
Potpuni nedostatak nekoga iskrenog i živog interesa koji bi ga zaokupio, osiromašenje i opustošenje njegova duševnog života, uz neumoljiv osjećaj dužnosti i upornu odlučnost da pod svaku cijenu dostojno reprezentira, da svim sredstvima prikrije koliko je iznemogao - svi su ti faktori učinili od njegova života glumu. Učinili su ga izvještačenim, proračunatim i usiljenim, tako da mu se svaka riječ, svaka kretnja, svaka i najmanja djelatnost među ljudima pretvorila u napornu i silno zamornu igru.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
Crazy Little Thing
True Devotion to Mar...
The Facts and Fictio...
Must Love Dogs
Where I End and You...
Amy and IsabelleBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
