To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891Quotes
There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.
—Herophilus, c. 290 BCLet the young know they will never find a more interesting, more instructive book than the patient himself.
—Giorgio Baglivi, c. 1696The doctor occupies a seat in the front row of the stalls of the human drama, and is constantly watching and even intervening in the tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies which form the raw material of the literary art.
—W. Russell Brain, 1952All pain is one malady with many names.
—Antiphanes, c. 400 BCNo families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860Health 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.
—Robert Burton, 1621Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today.
—Confucius, c. 515 BCDoctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.
—William Saroyan, 1943He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1833Well now, there’s a remedy for everything except death.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605When the physician said to him, “You have lived to be an old man,” he said, “That is because I never employed you as my physician.”
—Pausanias, c. 450 BC