When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were, I answered, smoked salmon and Bach.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the early preferences of the author, highlighting the joy found in simple pleasures and artistic appreciation.
In this quote, Oliver Sacks shares a childhood memory that illustrates how, even at a young age, he had a deep appreciation for the finer things in life, such as smoked salmon and the music of Bach. This revelation speaks to the idea that our tastes and interests can be indicative of our deeper selves and that joy can be found in both food and art, which shape our identities and experiences.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of nurturing a child's passions.
There 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.
In general, people are afraid to acknowledge hallucinations because they immediately see them as a sign of something awful happening to the brain, whereas in most cases they're not.
Dr. Kertesz mentioned to me a case known to him of a farmer who had developed prosopagnosia and in consequence could no longer distinguish (the faces of) his cows, and of another such patient, an attendant in a Natural History Museum, who mistook his own reflection for the diorama of an ape
Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more - it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.
We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.
I rejoice when I meet gifted young people... I feel the future is in good hands.
The chief problem about death ... is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought.
You may fetter my leg, but Zeus himself cannot get the better of my free will.
America is not just a democracy, it represents a certain culture of competitive mobility and personality aspirations, politics is not merely a clash of interests, but a clash of dreams.
The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.
Etymologically, 'patient' means sufferer.
On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.
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