In times of pestilence, gaiety and joyousness are most profitable.
—Jacme d’Agramont, 1348Quotes
Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1960The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929Disease 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, 1912’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.
—Cotton Mather, 1693Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.
—Hans Zinsser, 1935Health in all lands is among the indispensable guarantees of human progress.
—Helen Keller, 1936Hygienic 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 BCOurs is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.
—Susan Sontag, 1963What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?
—Ovid, c. 10How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object.
—Charles Lamb, 1833