Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.

The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.

Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.

All pain is one malady with many names.

Physician, heal yourself: thus you help your patient too. Let his best help be to see with his own eyes the man who makes himself well.

I am dying with the help of too many physicians.