The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615Quotes
The sick man is the parasite of society.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
—Samuel Johnson, 1750He who dies of epidemic disease is a martyr.
—Muhammad, c. 630The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929’Tis a portentous sign / When a man sweats and at the same time shivers.
—Plautus, c. 180 BCIf they prescribe a lot of remedies for some sickness or other, it means that the sickness is incurable.
—Anton Chekhov, 1904Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1960Disease is not of the body but of the place.
—Latin proverbAll the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.
—Jack London, 1912Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.
—Susan Sontag, 1963How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object.
—Charles Lamb, 1833Diseases are not immutable entities but dynamic social constructions that have biographies of their own.
—Robert P. Hudson, 1983