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Quotes

In times of pestilence, gaiety and joyousness are most profitable.

—Jacme d’Agramont, 1348

Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.

—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1960

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

—Agnes Repplier, 1929

Disease is not of the body but of the place.

—Latin proverb

All the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.

—Jack London, 1912

’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.

—Cotton Mather, 1693

Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.

—Hans Zinsser, 1935

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

—Helen Keller, 1936

Hygienic law, like martial law, supersedes rights in crises.

—Samuel Hopkins Adams, 1913

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

—Plautus, c. 180 BC

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.

—Susan Sontag, 1963

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

—Ovid, c. 10

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object.

—Charles Lamb, 1833