93 Quotes by Sherwin B. Nuland

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.

The dignity to be sought in death is the appreciation by others of what one has been in life,... that proceeds from a life well lived and from the acceptance of one's own death as a necessary process of nature.... It is also the recognition that the real event taking place at the end of our life is our death, not the attempts to prevent it.

The dignity we seek in dying is not to be found in our final weeks, days or moments but in the way we live and how we are seen by those people whose lives we affect.

The more personal you are willing to be and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are. Everybody needs to be understood. And out of that comes every form of love.

If we cannot heal in one way, we must learn to heal in another.

For aging is an art. The years between its first intimations and the time of the ultimate letting go of all earthly things can-if the readiness and resolve are there-be the real harvest of our lives.

A realistic expectation also demands our acceptance that one's allotted time on earth must be limited to an allowance consistent with the continuity of our species... We die so that the world may continue to live. We have been given the miracle of life because trillions and trillions of living things have prepared the way for us and then have died-in a sense, for us. We die, in turn, so that others may live. The tragedy of a single individual becomes, in the balance of natural things, the triumph of ongoing life.

The good thing that may yet happen during dying is not the possibility of survival when we're beyond that point. The good thing that may yet happen is that our lives will have great meaning for those we leave behind.

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.