Words of Wisdom
The challenges of dealing with illness have been faced by humans from the beginning of time. Throughout the ages, some of the world’s greatest minds have shared their thoughts on the subject, so let’s see what some of them have had to say.
The following quotations about health are from the website “The Quote Garden – Quotations about Health,” compiled and edited by Terri Guillemets of Phoenix, Arizona.
Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
– Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1977
The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.
– Larry Dossey, M.D.
The appearance of a disease is swift as an arrow; its disappearance slow, like a thread.
– Chinese Proverb
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
– World Health Organization, 1948
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
– G.K. Chesterton, author
He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctors.
– Chinese Proverb
The (…) patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop.
– Quentin Regestein, M.D.
Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.
– Cicero, philosopher
To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.
– Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and poet
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.
– Irish Proverb
The I in illness is isolation, and the crucial letters in wellness are WE.
– Author unknown, as quoted in Mimi Guarneri, The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing
Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene supports the mind supports the body too.
– John Armstrong
The most important thing in illness is never to lose heart.
– Nikolai Lenin
