“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
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“Brambleclaw's tail filicked angrily. "Did there have to be so many lies?" He was staring at Squirrelflight. "Couldn't you have told me the truth?"
Squirrelflight dipped her head. "It was never my secret to tell. Leafpool had so much to lose".
"She lost everything anyway", Brambleclaw snarled.
"No, I didn't". Leafpool lifted her muzzle. "I watched my kits grow into fine warrior, and I still serve my Clan with all my heart".
Lionblaze felt his heart prick. Perhaps this was the truth that was most important. Leafpool had sacrificed so much and, even though her kits rejected her time and again, she'd never stopped loving them. In his darkest moments, he couldn't deny that.
"Brambleclaw, I'm sorry". Squirrelflight moved closer to the ThunderClan deputy. Her voice was stronger now, as if she was tired of being punished for something she had believed to be right. "You have to understand that I never intended to hurt you. I loved you, and was proud to raise these kits with you. You were a wonderful father".
"But I wasn't their father!" Brambleclaw hissed.
"Yes, you were!" Squirrelflight thrust her muzzle close to Brambleclaw's. Her eyes blazed. "Don't throw away everything just because you are angry with me!"
Lionblaze swallowed. "I was so proud to be your son".
Brambleclaw looked at him in surprise, as if he'd forgotton Lionblaze was there. Something in the deputy's expression changed. "And I couldn't have asked for a better son. And you Jayfeather. Or a better daughter, Hollyleaf." Hollyleaf opened her mouth as if to protest, but Brambleclaw spoke first. "You played no part in this deception, I know that. Whatever you did, it was because of the lies taht had been told when you were born."
"It was my fault alone," Leafpool meowed quietly. "You are wrong to blame Squirrelflight. She was just being loyal to me. And now that we know about the prophecy, surely the only thing that matters is that these kits were accepted by their Clan? It's not about us, after all. It's about them. Their destinies shaped ours, right from the moment they were born."
Squirrelflight nodded. "Everything was meant to be".
Lionblaze looked down at his paws. If these cats could accept their destinies, then he had enough courage to accept his. I am one of the Four.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from The Last Hope
“Ring around the rosie.
A pocket full of posie.
Ashes ashes, we all fall down.
Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100-million people...
Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense...
How can I be so sure about this rhyme when all the experts disagree?
Because I ate the kid who made it up.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from The Last Days
“We'd been waltzing and eating tea cakes with a murderer.”
― Alyxandra Harvey, quote from Haunting Violet
“CRUSHING THE SPIRIT OF CHILDHOOD SINCE 1898.”
― Matt Myklusch, quote from The Accidental Hero
“What we do and think in our own lives, then, becomes of extreme importance as it effects everything we're connected to.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
The Third Policeman
Aesop's Fables
The Forever War
North and South
About a Boy
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