Lewis Thomas Quotes

The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking. Immediately at the moment of perception, you can feel the mind going to work, sending the odor around from place to place, setting off complex repertories through the brain, polling one center after another for signs of re-recognition, for old memories and […]

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language… We have affection We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a “common goal” of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.