A Quote by Oliver Sacks

It is easy to recollect the good things of life, the times when one's heart rejoices and expands, when everything is enfolded in kindness and love; it is easy to recollect the fineness of life-how noble one was, how generous one felt, what courage one showed in the face of adversity.
The world doesn't yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experiences of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. Re recollect, recollect, recollect.
Without love and kindness life is cold, selfish and uninteresting and leads to distaste for everything. With kindness, the difficult becomes easy, the obscure clear; life assumes a charm and it's miseries are softened. If we knew the power of kindness. we should transform the world into a paradise.
Nothing was ever easy in Memphis and I think that's why the fans were drawn to our team so much. It's because the way we played and the way we got overlooked and the respect that we didn't get most of the time was very similar to how the city felt and how the locals felt about life in general. It was an easy bond.
I have my own peculiar yardstick for measuring a man: Does he have the courage to cry in a moment of grief? Does he have the compassion not to hunt an animal? In his relationship with a woman, is he gentle? Real manliness is nurtured in kindness and gentleness, which I associate with intelligence, comprehension, tolerance, justice, education, and high morality. If only men realized how easy it is to open a woman's heart with kindness, and how many women close their hearts to the assaults of the Don Juans.
Of all the things people have taught me regarding life lessons or anything that would benefit me, I don't think anything helped me learn more about life than football. You go through so many different things: adversity, how to handle adversity, how to handle success, how to lead, how to be a teammate, how to communicate.
It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.
People never will recollect that mere learning and mere cleverness are of next to no value in life, while energy and intellectual grip, the things that are inborn and cannot be taught, are everything.
Everyone is handed adversity in life. No one's journey is easy. It's how they handle it that makes people unique.
...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.
When I recollect the treasure of friendship that has been bestowed upon me I withdraw all charges against life. If much has been denied me, much, very much has been given. So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart I shall say that life is good.
To be ourselves we must have ourselves – possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must “recollect” ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy and dull things become cheerful.
How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.
It is a mistake to look at someone who is self assertive and say, "It's easy for her, she has good self-esteem." One of the ways you build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiven ess requires courage, no matter how high your self-esteem.
In my experience, men who respond to good fortune with modesty and kindness are harder to find than those who face adversity with courage.
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