Quotes from Sherwin B. Nuland

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.

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.

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.

I've seen so many patients, particularly elderly patients, over the years who become debilitated and changed by the process by which I cure them or another doctor cures them. And has it really been worth it?

I have been following the attempt to initiate or revamp federal involvement in the health of Americans since it was a major topic for my high school debating team in 1947.

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.

Cancer cells are fixed at an age where they are still too young to have learned the rules of the society in which they live. As with so many immature individuals of all living kinds, everything they do is excessive and uncoordinated with the needs or constraints of their neighbors... they are reproductive but not productive.

Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.

Every triumph over some major pathology, no matter how ringing the victory, is only a reprieve from the inevitable end.

How much of the "good death" is for the person dying and how much for the person helping him?

Moths and flames, mankind and death--there is little difference.

The only certainty, whether spoken or not, is that the doctors, nurses, and technicians are fighting not only death but their own uncertainties as well. In most resuscitations, those can be narrowed down to two main questions: Are we doing the right things? and, Should we be doing anything at all?

Self-assurance, optimism, productivity, attachments of caritas to others, pride in our physical selves—these are all philosophies that enhance living. They are wellsprings largely of our own making, and they can grow in significance as we let their energies pour into the ever-widening, deepening channel of experience and wisdom.

There is no way to deter old age from its grim duty, but a life of accomplishment makes up in quality for what it cannot add in quantity.

Nature is being kind without knowing it, as nature can be cruel without knowing it.

The three are: a sense of mutual caring and connectedness with others; the maintenance, insofar as we can influence it by our own actions, of the physical capability of our bodies; and creativity. Each of the three requires work; each of the three brings immense rewards.

The more knowledge we have about the realities of lethal illness, the more sensible we can be about choosing the time to stop or the time to fight on, and the less we expect the kind of death most of us will not have. For those who die and those who love them, a realistic expectation is the surest path to tranquillity.

When we mourn, it should be the loss of love that makes us grieve, not the guilt that we did something wrong.

These are two different belief systems. There is no reason in the world that the religious have to explain their faith on a scientific basis. It makes no sense. What is needed between science and religion is not a debate but a conversation, each one saying: you're here to stay, and I'm here to stay, so let's find out how our relationship can be of greatest benefit to this world.

knowledge without wisdom is a clear and present danger

The kind of child our society resembles just now is one whose intelligence far exceeds his maturity. Every teacher and every parent knows what a formula for disaster that can be.

Shakespeare has Julius Caesar reflect that: Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.

We live today in the era not of the art of dying, but of the art of saving life

These days (if I may steal a term from the jargon of the contemporary rialto), it is not politically correct to admit that some people die of old age.