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.
I feel like a lot of times we're put in a box that people always say: 'Oh, sports and politics should stay separate and all this.' And I say, yes, but also at the same time, I'm a human first before I'm a tennis player.
What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day.
Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy, yet ISIS' ferocious campaign against the Shia, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Muslims who don't precisely share its views has united every ethnic and religious group in Syria and Iraq against them.
You got to tell me the brave captain Why are the wicked so strong? How do the angels get to sleep When the devil leaves the porch light on?
Sometimes the routes leading to feelings of anger are so convoluted and circuitous that it takes enormous skill to discern their original source, or fountainhead. But regardless of the reason for or the source of the anger or the relative ease or complexity in perceiving either the anger or its source - everybody, but everybody, gets angry.
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