The moral order of the world runs aground on hay fever. Of what use is it? Why was it invented? Cancer and hydrophobia, at least, may be defended on the ground that they kill. Killing may have some benign purpose, some esoteric significance, some cosmic use. But hay fever never kills; it merely tortures. No […]
Illness Quotes
I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, because I’m not myself, you see.
Falling ill is not something that happens to us, it is a choice we make as a result of things happening to us.
Don’t deny the diagnosis; try to defy the verdict.
Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.
Epidemics have often been more influential than statesmen and soldiers in shaping the course of political history, and diseases may also color the moods of civilizations.
Once Antigonus was told his son was ill, and went to see him. At the door he met some young beauty. Going in, he sat down by the bed and took his pulse. “The fever,” said Demetrius, “has just left me.” – ” Oh, yes,” replied the father, “I met it going out at the […]
The incurable ills are the imaginary ills.
I think of my illness (ovarian cancer) as a school, and finally I’ve graduated.
If you were to rush in to this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal-with God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, whomever-in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before, I would, without a […]
