There is, to be sure, sometimes only a small difference between being alert to possible danger and allowing oneself to become terrified to the point of paralysis by seeming or imagined portents. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
Once the notion of depression had begun to dominate the diagnostic armamentarium, it became but a matter of time before patients with relatively mild disorders of mood or anxiety would be entered into it. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
Every hope of successive generations of scholars that order might be constructed from the chaotic mess of medical nomenclature has been frustrated. Even diseases recognized in the same historical period have been given names based on characteristics that have no relation to one another, and thus no common criteria. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
I never had a conscious fear of death, but I did have a conscious fear of sickness. By the time I completed medical school, that fear was gone. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
It’s unnatural to believe death usually has a beauty and a concordance and is usually a coming together of your life’s work. It leads to frustration for the patient. And it leaves grieving families convinced they did something wrong. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
The dignity we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
The final disease that nature inflicts on us will determine the atmosphere in which we take our leave of life, but our own choices should be allowed, insofar as possible, to be the decisive factor in the manner of our going. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
Where nothing in a person’s earlier years lends itself to an old age devoted to continuing intellectual and physical pursuits, a late-life interest in Tolstoy or even crossword puzzles is unlikely to appear, no matter the urging by well-intentioned social workers or people like me who write books about it. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
Nosology (from the Greek ‘nosos,’ meaning ‘disease,’ and ‘logos,’ referring to ‘study’) is not a sport for the timid, and certainly not for those so scrupulous about rules and order that they demand consistency in all things. Sherwin B. Nuland Read Quote
