A human being is not mindless or mentally deficient without language, but he is severely restricted in the range of his thoughts, confined, in effect, to an immediate, small world.
We ourselves were made of the very same elements as composed the sun and stars, that some of my atoms might once have been in a distant star. But it frightened me too, made me feel that my atoms were...
إذا كان لدينا الصبا ، والجمال ، والقوة ، والموهبة ، وإذا وجدنا الشهرة ، والثروة ، والحظوة ، والرضى ، فمن السهل أن نكون لطفاء ، وأن نلقى العالم بقلب ودود . لكن دعنا فقط نفقد الحظوة ، والجمال ، والقوة ،...
إذا فقد رجلٌ رجلاً أو عيناً ، فهو يعرف أنه فقد رِجلاً أو عيناً. ولكن إذا فقد نفساً - نفسه- فليس بإمكانه أن يعرف ذلك، لأنه لم يعد موجوداً هناك ليعرف
Удивительное дело – она и победила, и проиграла. Восстановив действие, она утратила бытие. Пустив в ход все ресурсы нервной системы, а также волю, мужество, выдержку и независимость, она приспособилас...
In Korsakov’s, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by to...
Had been so damaged emotionally by isolation (and in one case institutionalization as well) that they had become withdrawn and inaccessible, had turned against communication, and were no longer open t...
A ‘Divine mathematics,’ with which one could create the richest possible reality by the most economical means, and this, it now seemed to me, was everywhere apparent: in the beautiful economy by which...
While most of the flowers in the garden had rich scents and colors, we also had two magnolia trees, with huge but pale and scentless flowers. The magnolia flowers, when ripe, would be crawling with ti...
We may see very clearly how the wrong sound, or anti-music, is pathogenic and migrainogenic; while the right sound—proper music—is truly tranquillising, and immediately restores cerebral health. These...
Visual illusions, too, fascinated me; they showed how intellectual understanding, insight, and even common sense were powerless against the force of perceptual distortions. Gibson’s inverting glasses...
Ucho w liczbach: A youthful ear can hear ten octaves of sound, spanning a range from about thirty to twelve tousand vibrations a second. The avarege ear can distinguish sounds a seventeenth of a tone...
Tourette’s syndrome is seen in every race, every culture, every stratum of society; it can be recognized at a glance once one is attuned to it; and cases of barking and twitching, of grimacing, of str...
Though the tendency to tic is innate in Tourette's, the particular form of tics often has a personal or historical origin. Thus a name, a sound, a visual image, a gesture, perhaps seen years before an...
These then are tales of metamorphosis, brought about by neurological chance, but metamorphosis into alternative states of being, other forms of life, no less human for being so different.
There have also been novels about the deaf by the deaf, for example, Islay by Douglas Bullard, which attempt to catch the distinctive perceptions, the stream of consciousness, the inner speech of thos...
The situation changed for Michael and for millions of other schizophrenics, for better and worse, around 1953, when the first tranquilizer—a drug called Largactil in England, Thorazine in the United S...
The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
The periodic table was incredibly beautiful, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I could never adequately analyze what I meant here by beauty – simplicity? coherence? rhythm? inevitability? Or p...
That those who entered such nursing homes needed meaning—a life, an identity, dignity, self-respect, a degree of autonomy—was ignored or bypassed;