Sherwin B. Nuland Quotes

No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy, and the untiring hope of the human spirit.

My wife has always been positive. In the hospital my brother-in-law was trying to prepare her for the worst, but she said, 'Hold on, I don't want to hear that. He'll be all right. I'm going to ring BMW now and order a car with manual controls because the first thing he'll want to do when he leaves hospital is drive.' She knew her husband!

There are no greater treasures than the highest human qualities such as compassion, courage and hope. Not even tragic accident or disaster can destroy such treasures of the heart.

Both now and for always, I intend to hold fast to my belief in the hidden strength of the human spirit.

Difficult times often bring out the best in people.

I'm naturally an optimist, but my basis for hope is rooted in my understanding of human nature.

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

I'm a writer of faith who worries about the intolerance of religion. I look at the past and fear we haven't learned from it. I believe that humanity is capable of evil as well as great acts of courage and goodness. I have hope. Deep down, I believe in the human spirit, although sometimes that belief is shaken.

What can you say about such a man as Christopher Reeve? He embodied all the best that a human being can hope to be.

We forget that the human spirit, the spirit of goodness and truth in the world, is still only an infant crying in the night, and that the struggle with darkness is as yet mostly an unequal struggle.

People overcoming the odds is actually a really important part of humanity, and I don't think we kind of get to celebrate that as much as we should.

That’s what’s so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn’t matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that’s our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope.

We do not abandon ship. I say, as corny as it may sound, through the strength and spirit and fire and dare and gamble of a few men in a few ways we can save the carcass of humanity from drowning. No light goes out until it goes out. Let's fight as men, not rats. Period. No further addition.

We should be inspired by people... who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong-even in the most difficult circumstances.

Australia is a nation of compassion. Courage and compassion. And the third of these great values: resilience.

There are times you can't really see or even feel how sweet life can be. Hopefully its mountains will be higher than its valleys are deep. I know things that are broken can be fixed. Take the punch if you have to, hit the canvas and then get up again. Life is worth it.

Heroism is endurance for one moment more.

If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world - all you hear about on the news is all the bad stuff everyday, but what was refreshing to me was after that, you saw how many good people there are out there. For every one bad one, there's a thousand good ones.

Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.

I haven't lost faith in human nature and I haven't decided to be less compassionate to strangers.

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial periods. He was always unshaken, completely tranquil, the same ebullient, laughing, jovial man.

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

I think getting up every morning is the most amazing thing any of us do. We know what's out there, and yet we keep going.

For me, writing post-apocalyptic novels isn't so much about exploding helicopters and fifty-megaton doomsday bombs as it is about the pleasure of dealing with the best of everything that makes us human: cleverness, grit, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.

Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.