By Oliver Sacks — 2015
A month ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out—a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver.
Read on www.nytimes.com
CLEAR ALL
Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
'Knock and it shall be opened.’ But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac?
Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.
3
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
The death of a beloved is an amputation.
2
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. . . . It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.
Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.
Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
Do not dare not to dare.