Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
—Samuel Johnson, 1750Quotes
Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.
—Hans Zinsser, 1935The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.
—Leslie Jamison, 2020What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?
—Ovid, c. 10In times of pestilence, gaiety and joyousness are most profitable.
—Jacme d’Agramont, 1348Hygienic law, like martial law, supersedes rights in crises.
—Samuel Hopkins Adams, 1913The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
—Marianne Moore, 1935The sick man is the parasite of society.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.
—Susan Sontag, 1963We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.
—Peter Mere Latham, c. 1845Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1960