“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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“She probably just wants to see me get eaten.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Hamlet: An Authoritative Text, Intellectual Backgrounds, Extracts from the Sources, Essays in Criticism (Norton Critical Edition)
“It’s just contributing to the narrative that girls have to monitor their bodies and behaviors, and boys have the license and freedom to act like animals. Don’t you think that’s unfair to girls? Don’t you think that’s shortchanging boys? The whole thing is just toxic.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from Moxie
“If your master demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty.”
― Jeff Wheeler, quote from The Thief's Daughter
“One of the key paradoxes in Buddhism is that we need goals to be inspired, to grow, and to develop, even to become enlightened, but at the same time we must not get overly fixated or attached to these aspirations. If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it. Peace and equanimity come from letting go of our attachment to the goal and the method. That is the essence of acceptance. Reflecting”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
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SinnerBookQuoters 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.
