Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.
Oliver SacksThere will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate - of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
Oliver SacksEnhancement not only allows the possibilities of a healthy fullness and exuberance, but of a rather ominous extravagance, aberration, monstrosity ... This danger is built into the very nature of growth and life. Growth can become over-growth, life 'hyper-life' ... The paradox of an illness which can present as wellness - as a wonderful feeling of health and well-being, and only later reveal its malignant potentials - is one of the chimaeras, tricks and ironies of nature.
Oliver SacksIn examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.
Oliver SacksAnd so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: โA man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral being ... It is here ... you may touch him, and see a profound change.โ Memory, mental activity, mind alone, could not hold him; but moral attention and action could hold him completely.
Oliver Sacks