Top 60 Sherwin B. Nuland Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope that we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

2. “The life sciences contain spiritual values which can never be explained by the materialistic attitude of present day science.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

3. “The dignity that we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives. Ars moriendi as ars vivendi: The art of dying is the art of living. The honesty and grace of the years of life that are ending is the real measure of how we die. It is not in the last weeks or days that we compose the message that will be remembered, but in all the decades that preceded them. Who has lived in dignity, dies in dignity.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

4. “Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brains cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening – not to say healthy – old age.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

5. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

6. “To become comfortable with uncertainty is one of the primary goals in the training of a physician.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

7. “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?”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

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

— Sherwin B. Nuland

9. “How much of the “good death” is for the person dying and how much for the person helping him?”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

10. “Empires fall, ids explode, great symphonies are written, and behind all of it is a single instinct that demands satisfaction.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

11. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

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

— Sherwin B. Nuland

13. “Hope is an abstract word. In fact, it is more than just a word; hope is an abstruse concept, meaning different things to each of us during different times and circumstances of our lives. Even politicians know its hold on the human mind, and the mind of the electorate.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

14. “Before you conclude that your options are limited, you need evidence that you cannot do something, rather than just deciding that you cannot do it.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

15. “Hope can still exist even when rescue is impossible.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

16. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

17. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

18. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

19. “We die so that the world may continue to live. We have been given the miracle of life because trillions upon 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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

20. “Even putting aside the Judeo-Christian morality upon which the Constitution and our nations culture are based, the notion of forced euthanasia would contradict the long-held body of medical ethics to which all American doctors must adhere.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

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

— Sherwin B. Nuland

22. “I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

23. “Moths and flames, mankind and death – there is little difference.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

24. “Not death but disease is the real enemy, disease the malign force that requires confrontation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

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

— Sherwin B. Nuland

26. “Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

27. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

28. “Every life is different from any that has gone before it, and so is every death.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

29. “When my time comes, I will seek hope in the knowledge that insofar as possible I will not be allowed to suffer or be subjected to needless attempts to maintain life; I will seek it in the certainty that I will not be abandoned to die alone; I am seeking it now, in the way I try to live my life, so that those who value what I am will have profited by my time on earth and be left with comforting recollections of what we have meant to one another.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

30. “In the community of living tissues, the uncontrolled mob of misfits that is cancer behaves like a gang of perpetually wilding adolescents. They are the juvenile delinquents of cellular society.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

31. “Dying begins with the first act of life.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

32. “The lesson is never learned – there will always be those who persist in seeking the Fountain of Youth, or at least delaying what is irrevocably ordained.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

33. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

34. “There is, to be sure, sometimes only a small difference between being alert to possible danger and allowing oneself to become terrified to the point of paralysis by seeming or imagined portents.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

35. “Human beings are capable of the kind of love and loyalty that transcends not only the physical debasement but even the spiritual weariness of the years of sorrow.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

36. “Share your optimisms and keep your pessimisms to yourself.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

37. “The dignity we create in the time allotted to us becomes a continuum with the dignity we achieve by the altruism of accepting the necessity of death.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

38. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

39. “We are not well served by being lulled into unjustified expectations.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

40. “Nature will always win in the end, as it must if our species is to survive.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

41. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

42. “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.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

43. “Though everyone may yearn for a tranquil death, the basic instinct to stay alive is a far more powerful force.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

44. “So it was like the old scenario that so often throws a shadow over the last days of people with cancer: we knew – she knew – we knew she knew – she knew we knew – and none of us would talk about it when we were all together.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

45. “Since human beings first began to write, they have recorded their wish for an idealized ending some call the “good death,” as if any of us can ever be sure of it or have any reason to expect it. There are pitfalls of decision-making to be sidestepped and varieties of hope to seek, but beyond that we must forgive ourselves when we cannot achieve some preconceived image of dying right.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

46. “Whatever mystery attaches to such a death is imposed on it by those who live. It is a tribute to the human spirit that the life preceding triumphs over the ugly events that most of us will experience as we die, or as we move toward our last moments.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

47. “Endorphin elevation appears to be an innate physiological mechanism to protect mammals and perhaps other animals against the emotional and physical dangers or terror and pain. It is a survival device, and because it has evolutionary value it probably appeared during the savage period of our prehistory when sudden life-threatening events occurred with frequency. Many a life has no doubt been saved by the absence of panicky response to sudden danger.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

48. “Whether the result of wear, tear, and exhaustion of resources or whether genetically programmed, all life has a finite span and each species has its own particular longevity. For human beings, this would appear to be approximately 100 to 110 years. This means that even were it possible to prevent or cure every disease that carries people off before the ravages of senescence do, virtually no one would live beyond a century or a bit more.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

49. “To the wise advice that we live every day as though it will be our last, we do well to add the admonition to live every day as though we will be on this earth forever.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

50. “Perhaps the mere existence of things undone should be a sort of satisfaction in itself, though the idea would appear to be paradoxical. Only one who is long since dead while still seemingly alive does not have many “promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep,” and that state of inertness is not to be desired. To the wise advice that we live every day as though it will be our last, we do well to add the admonition to live every day as though we will be on this earth forever.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland