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Oliver Sacks Quotes

Total quotes: 13
“I find myself walking softly on the right undergrowth beneath the trees, not wanting to crack a twig, to crush or disturb anything in the least--for there is such a sense of stillness and peace that the wrong sort of movement, even one's very presence, might be fest as an intrusion, and, so to speak, anger the woods.”
— Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind
Tagged: sound, Forest, Nature, Natural, Trees, Leaves, twig, undergrowth, Crush, Disturb, Feet, Walking, step, Stillness, Silence, Peace, Movement, intruder, intrusion, Anger, Woods
“My father one told me that the very word "paradise" meant garden, spelling out for me the four letters (pe resh dalet samech) of pardes, the Hebrew word for garden.”
— Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind
Tagged: Garden, Word, Language, Spelling, Letters, Meaning, Paradise
“But it was not sudden — I did not wake up one morning and find that chemistry was dead for me; it was gradual, it stole upon me bit by bit. it happened at first, I think, without my even realizing it.”
— Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
Tagged: chemistry, Passion, gradual, slowly, happening, realization, Realize, creep up
“But gardens, Eden or Kew, are not the right metaphors here, for the primeval has nothing to do with the human, but has to do with the ancient, the aboriginal, the beginning of all things.”
— Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind
Tagged: Gardens, Garden, Nature, Natural, Metaphor, primeval, human, Being, ancient, aboriginal, Beginning, Life, Living, living beings
“When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were, I answered, “smoked salmon and Bach.””
— Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
Tagged: five, Child, kid, Childhood, Memory, childhood memory, Favorite, Thing, Favorite Things, salmon, smoked, fish, back, Music, composer, Musician, classical
“My own first love was biology. I spent a great part of my adolescence in the Natural History museum in London (and I still go to the Botanic Garden almost every day, and to the Zoo every Monday). The sense of diversity—of the wonder of innumerable forms of life—has always thrilled me beyond anything else.”
— Oliver Sacks, Wikiquote.org: Oliver Sacks
Tagged: Love, Biology, Adolescence, Natural History Museum, Botanical, Garden, Zoo, Life, life forms, Living, Wonder
“The primeval, the sublime, are much better words here — for they indicate realms remote from the moral or the human, realms which force us to gaze into immense vistas of space and time, where the beginnings and originations of all things lie hidden.”
— Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind
Tagged: primeval, Sublime, Words, realm, Remote, Moral, human, Nature, Natural, Being, Life, Living, force, Space, Time, Beginning, Origin
“It was at this time that I sought for (and sometimes achieved) an intense concentration, a complete absorption in the worlds of mineralogy and chemistry and physics, in science--focusing on them, holding myself together in the chaos.”
— Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
Tagged: Seek, sought, Achieve, Concentration, Absorption, mineralogy, chemistry, physics, Science, Chaos, Study
“Temple is an intensely moral creature. She has a passionate sense of right and wrong, for example, in regard to the treatment of animals; and law, for her, is clearly not just the law of the land but, in some far deeper sense, a divine or cosmic law, whose violation can have disastrous effects—seeming breakdowns in the course of nature itself.”
— Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
Tagged: creature, Create Your Life, Living, Moral, Passion, Passionate, Right, Wrong, Treatment, Land, Law, divine, cosmic, Cosmos, cosmic law, Violation, law of nature, Sense
“"Capital-punishment states are the worst animal states and the worst for the handicapped.” All this makes Temple passionately angry, and passionately concerned for humane reform: she wants to reform the treatment of the handicapped, especially the autistic, as she wants to reform the treatment of cattle in the meat industry.”
— Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
Tagged: Capital Punishment, States, animal, Handicap, Humane, Reform, rights, autistic, cattle, Meat, Industry, meat industry, farm animals
“It came upon me sometime in my fifteenth year that I no longer woke up with sudden excitements—“Today I will get the Clerici solution! Today I will read about Humphry Davy and electric fish! Today I will finally understand diamagnetism, perhaps!” I no longer seemed to get these sudden illuminations, these epiphanies, these excitements which Flaubert (whom I was now reading) called “erections of the mind.” Erections of the body, yes, this was a new, exotic part of life—but those sudden raptures of the mind, those sudden landscapes of glory and illumination, seemed to have deserted or abandoned me. Or had I, in fact, abandoned them?”
— Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
Tagged: Excitement, Body, Mind, illumination, Epiphany, Rapture, Landscape, glory, deserted, Abandon
“Temple, who was driving, suddenly faltered and wept. “I’ve read that libraries are where immortality lies. . . . I don’t want my thoughts to die with me. . . . I want to have done something. . . . I’m not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution—know that my life has meaning. Right now, I’m talking about things at the very core of my existence.” I was stunned. As I stepped out of the car to say goodbye, I said, “I’m going to hug you. I hope you don’t mind.” I hugged her—and (I think) she hugged me back.”
— Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
Tagged: Drive, Driving, falter, Weep, cry, library, Collection, Immortality, Truth, Lie, contribution positive, Meaning, Existence, Core, goodbye, bye, Hug, Sad, Life, purpose
“There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.”
— Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness
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