Agony Quote by Lewis Thomas

“There's really no such thing as the agony of dying. I'm quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of death. You see, something happens when the body knows it's about to go. Peptide hormones are released by cells in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Endorphins. They attach themselves to…” quote by Lewis Thomas — Download Open image

“There's really no such thing as the agony of dying. I'm quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of death. You see, something happens when the body knows it's about to go. Peptide hormones are released by cells in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Endorphins. They attach themselves to the cells responsible for feeling pain.”

Lewis Thomas

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.6 out of 5 (10 ratings)

More by Lewis Thomas

“We are endowed with genes which code out our reaction to beavers and otters, maybe our reaction to each other as well. We are stamped with stereotyped, unalterable patterns of response, ready to be released. And the behavior released in us, by such confrontations, is, essentially, a surprised affection. It is compulsory behavior and we can avoid it only by…

Lewis Thomas

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness…

Lewis Thomas

Image

“It is not a simple thing to decide where we fit, for at one time or another in our lives we manage to organize in every imaginable social arrangement...We have names to label each as self, and we believe without reservation that this system of taxonomy will guarantee the entity, the absolute separateness in each of us, but the mechanism…

Lewis Thomas

It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be enchanted by…

Lewis Thomas

Image

If an idea cannot move on its own, pushing it doesn't help; best to let it lie there.

Lewis Thomas

Image

Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends.

Lewis Thomas

Image

I do not agree with this century's fashion of running down the human species as a failed try, a doomed sport. At our worst,…

Lewis Thomas

Image

It would seem to me... an offense against nature, for us to come on the same scene endowed as we are with the curiosity,…

Lewis Thomas

Image

The drive to be useful is encoded in our genes. But when we gather in very large numbers, as in the modern nation-state, we seem capable of levels of folly and self-destruction to be found nowhere else in all of nature. But if we keep at it and keep alive, we are in for one surprise after another. We can…

Lewis Thomas

I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting.

Lewis Thomas

Image

“Nature abhors a long silence.”

Lewis Thomas

Image

“The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most…

Lewis Thomas

Image

Explore all 173 Lewis Thomas quotes

More Agony quotes

Many Republicans have always reminded me of professional WWF wrestlers. They come into the ring all pumped up and acting like they're invincible and…

Paul Feig

Image

“[W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range…

George Eliot

Image

As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but let that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure…

Alexander MacLaren

Love masters agony; the soul that seemed Forsaken feels her present God again And in her Father's arms Contented dies away.

John Keble

Image

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that…

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The cure is in the house, not brought by other hands from distant places, but by its own, in agony and blood.

Aeschylus

Image

Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the…

John Steinbeck

Image

The young man shivered. He rolled the stock themes of fantasy over in his mind: cars and stockbrokers and commuters, housewives and police, agony columns and commercials for soap, income tax and cheap restaurants, magazines and credit cards and streetlights and computers... 'It is escapism, true,' he said, aloud. 'But is not the highest impulse in mankind the urge toward…

Neil Gaiman

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me…

Harold Brodkey

Image

One often learns more from ten days of agony than ten years of contentment.

Merle Shain

Image

There’s been a problem, a problem eating away at me from the inside out. I’ve become weak, I’ve shown human compassion, and it has weakened me. But no more. Tonight I will once again feast on fear and suffering. My appetite for agony will be awakened. I will once again taste the pain of others. I will feast on the…

Kane

Pay special attention to their agony so I might take some pleasure.

Euripides

Image

Browse all 628 Agony quotes

Agony Quote by Lewis Thomas

Related quotes

More by Lewis Thomas

More Agony quotes