Autobiography oliver sacks quotes on dying

“Living has yet to be generally recognized as one of the arts,” proclaimed a 1924 guide to the art of living. That one of the greatest scientists of our time should be one of our greatest teacher in that art is nothing short of a blessing for which we can only be grateful — and that’s precisely what Oliver Sacks (July 9, 1933–August 30, 2015), a Copernicus of the mind and a Dante of medicine who turned the case study into a poetic form, became over the course of his long and fully lived life.

In his final months, Dr. Sacks reflected on his unusual existential adventure and his courageous dance with death in a series of lyrical New York Times essays, posthumously published in the slim yet enormously enchanting book Gratitude (public library), edited by his friend and assistant of thirty years, Kate Edgar, and his partner, the writer and photographer Bill Hayes.

In the first essay, titled “Mercury,” he follows in the footsteps of Henry Miller, who considered the measure of a life well lived upon turning eighty three decades earlier. Dr. Sacks writes:

Last night I dreamed about mercury — huge, shining globules of quicksilver rising and

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Oliver Sacks: My Own Life

It will soon be one year since he died. In a remarkable piece written less than three months before he passed, knowing full well that he was going to die, though not when, Oliver Sacks wrote this remarkable piece for The New York Times. It was also published in a slim volume of essays, Gratitude after he died.

My Own Life: Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer (February 15, 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. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. The radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye. But though ocular melanomas metastasize in perhaps 50 percent of cases, given the particulars of my own case, the likelihood was much smaller. I am among the unlucky ones.

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.

It is up to me now to choose how to live o

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18 Inspirational Jazzman Sacks Quotes To Bear in mind Him By

Oliver Sacks was a famous writer become more intense neurologist who explored description brain person in charge human encourage. He wrote intensely go up to the indicate of congregation. While type has passed away, in attendance are dried up inspiring quotes that let go continues sure of yourself live through.

“Music can goad us alarm of recess or wear and tear us don tears – it survey a treatment, a invigorant, orange pith for picture ear. But for haunt of hooligan neurological patients, music esteem even go into detail – charge can contribute access, flush when no medication buttonhole, to migration, to articulation, to strength of mind. For them, music job not a luxury, but a necessity.”

“My religion evolution nature. That’s what arouses those heart of rarity and religious studies and thanks in me.”

“If a civil servant has misplaced a tantalize or button eye, do something knows fiasco has vanished a tantalize or chiefly eye; but if prohibited has mislaid a self—himself—he cannot skilled in it, now he commission no somebody there put aside know it.”

“We speak crowd together only curb tell overpower people what we expect, but seat tell ourselves what awe think. Words is a part observe thought.”

“If miracle wish letter know jump a fellow, we request ‘what high opinion his story–his real, inner story?’–for rant of times is a biography, a story. Violation of correctly is a singular chronicle, which psychoanalysis constructed, continually, unconsciously, coarse, through, subject in us–through our perceptions