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Quotes

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

—Samuel Johnson, 1750

Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.

—Leslie Jamison, 2020

The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

It is strange indeed that the more we learn about how to build health, the less healthy Americans become.

—Adelle Davis, 1951

The sick man is the parasite of society.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889

I have learned much from disease which life could never have taught me anywhere else.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1830

Health in all lands is among the indispensable guarantees of human progress.

—Helen Keller, 1936

We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.

—Peter Mere Latham, c. 1845

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1902

The best quarantine is hygiene.

—Richard D. Arnold, 1871

What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?

—Ovid, c. 10

Men worry over the great number of diseases, while doctors worry over the scarcity of effective remedies.

—Bian Qiao, c. 500 BC

’Tis a portentous sign / When a man sweats and at the same time shivers.

—Plautus, c. 180 BC