Sickness and Health

It's no longer a question of staying healthy. Its' a question of finding a sickness you like. ~~ Jackie Mason

Old people shouldn't eat health foods. They need all the preservatives they can get. ~~ Robert Orben

There are remedies worse than the disease. ~~ Publilius Syrus

Mirth is God's medicine. ~~ Henry Ward Beecher

Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory. ~~ Albert Schweitzer

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured. ~~ Anton Chekhov

We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them. ~~ Lillian Hellman

[Prompted by laryngitis:] My doctor ordered me to shut up, which will make every American happy. ~~ William Jefferson Clinton

Health is infinite and expansive in mode, and reaches out to be filled with the fullness of the world; whereas disease is finite and reductive in mode, and endeavors to reduce the world to itself. ~~ Oliver Sacks

Money giving is a good criterion of a person's mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally ill people. ~~ Dr. Karl Menninger

If you take yourself too seriously, there's a chance you may end up seriously ill. ~~ Matt Weinstein

Laughter is a way of killing fear. It's fine to make awful jokes about your illness if it helps you. It's important to laugh about it. ~~ Betty Rollin [breast cancer survivor]

Retirement, we understand, is great if you are busy, rich, and healthy. But then, under those conditions, work is great too. ~~ Bill Vaughn

Being asked one day what was the surest way of remaining happy in this world, the Emperor Sigismund of Germany replied: "Only do in health what you have promised to do when you were sick." ~~ Unattributed

n ability to laugh, the courage to smile, a propensity for optimism and a playful disposition are healthful frames of mind that may accelerate healing and recovery from illness. ~~ Robert Holden

ag your thoughts away from your troubles -- by the ears, by the heels, or any other way, so you manage it; it's the healthiest thing a body can do. ~~ Mark Twain

I have a constant level of stress that is neither necessary nor completely healthy. The symptoms are that intimate bystanders will be lightly abused for things that have nothing to do with them. ~~ Harrison Ford

The simple truth is that happy people generally don't get sick. ~~ Bernie S. Siegel, MD

Humor is contagious. Laughter is infectious. Both are good for your health. ~~ William Fry, MD

How to get sicker: Think about all the awful things that could happen to you; be depressed, self-pitying, envious, and angry; blame everyone and everything for your illness; go to see lots of different doctors -- run from one to another, spend half your time in waiting rooms, gets lots of conflicting opinions and lots of experimental drugs; and complain about your symptoms to other people who are unhappy and embittered -- reinforce each other's feelings of hopelessness. ~~ Steven James

Over the years, I have encountered a surprising number of instances in which, to all appearances, patients have laughed themselves back to health, or at least have used their sense of humor as a very positive and adaptive response to their illness. ~~ Raymond A. Moody, Jr., MD

Getting well is not the only goal. Even more important is learning to live without fear, to be at peace with life, and ultimately death. ~~ Bernie Siegel, MD

Play is essential for health. In this sense, play is defined as any activity which tends to produce the emotions of joy or the experience we call having fun. So each person must define play for himself. Our energy and our will to live are increased by play. Play improves the quality of life and makes it richer. It lifts us out of despair and increases our wish to live. It increases the energy needed to mobilize the will to live as well. ~~ O. Carl Cimonton, MD

Cancer is probably the most unfunny thing in the world, but I'm a comedienne, and even cancer couldn't stop me from seeing humor in what I went through. ~~ Gilda Radner

Loneliness seems to have become the great American disease. ~~ John Corry

The most widespread disease in the world is the inferiority complex. ~~ Sterling Sill

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend. ~~ Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield

The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work. ~~ Albert Schweitzer, MD

I see humor as food. I don't think that the only time people should eat food is when they're ill. An adequate share of humor and laughter represent an essential part of the diet for the healthy person. ~~ Norman Cousins (see Said Who?)

How poor are they that have not patience? What wound did ever heal but by degrees? ~~ William Shakespeare

There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place. ~~ E. B. White

Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer. ~~ George Herbert

We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health. ~~ Lionel Trilling

A chuckle a day may not keep the doctor away, but it sure does make those times in life's waiting room a little more bearable. ~~ Anne Wilson Schaef

Women with body image or eating disorders are not a special category, just more extreme in their response to a culture that emphasizes thinness and impossible standards of appearance for women instead of individuality and health. ~~ Gloria Steinem

A general practitioner is a doctor who treats what you've got; a specialist is a doctor who finds you've got what he treats. ~~ Sydney J. Harris

Sleep, riches, and health to be truly enjoyed must be interrupted. ~~ Jean Paul Richter

We are all precancerous. ~~ George Carlin

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep. ~~ Aldous Huxley

One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail of one's life. ~~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I have never yet met a healthy person who worries very much about his health or a really good person who worries much about his own soul. ~~ J. B. S. Haldane

I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. ~~ Abraham Maslow

Jellinek's disease (alcoholism) is responsible for:
50 percent of all auto fatalities
80 percent of all home violence
30 percent of all suicides
60 percent of all child abuse
65 percent of all drownings… ~~ Kathleen Whalen Fitzgerald

Life is an incurable disease. ~~ Abraham Cowley

When a man dies, he does not just die of the disease he has; he dies of his whole life. ~~ Charles Peguy

There's lots of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it. ~~ Josh Billings

Some doctors say that cheerful people resist disease better than grumpy ones. The surly bird catches the germ. ~~ Unattributed

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure. It transcends all barriers. ~~ Ed Sullivan

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. ~~ Voltaire

Good friends are good for your health. ~~ Dr. Irwin Sarason

When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both, it’s health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death. ~~ J. P. Donleavy

Do not despair -- many are happy much of the time; more eat than starve, more are healthy than sick, more curable than dying; not so many dying as dead; and one of the thieves was saved. Hell's bells and all's well -- half the world is at peace with itself, and so is the other half; vast areas are unpolluted; millions of children grow up without suffering deprivation, and millions, while deprived, grow up without suffering cruelties, and millions, while deprived and cruelly treated, none the less grow up. No laughter is sad and many tears are joyful. ~~ Tom Stoppard

A maiden born when Autumn leaves
Are rustling in September's breeze,
A Sapphire on her brow should bind,
'Twill cure diseases of the mind. ~~ Birthstone Rhyme [Unattributed]

If your time hasn't come not even a doctor can kill you. ~~ Joe Moore

It should be the function of medicine to help people die young as late in life as possible. ~~ Ernst Wynder

Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation," a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. ~~ John F. Kennedy

Who comes with Summer to this earth
And owes to June her date of birth,
With ring of Agate on her hand,
Can health, wealth, and long life command. ~~ Birthstone Rhyme [Unattributed]

Ketchup is not an all-American condiment. It was originally a Chinese medicine. ~~ Deane Jordan [1,001 Facts Somebody Screwed Up]

Epidemics have often been more influential than statesmen and soldiers in shaping the course of political history, and diseases may also color the moods of civilizations. ~~ Rene Dubos and Jean Dubos [The White Plague]

The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription. ~~ Norman Cousins

The trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind. ~~ G. K. Chesterton [Come to Think of It]

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life -- the sick, the needy, and the handicapped. ~~ Hubert H. Humphrey

If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe. ~~ Lord Salisbury

We are under-exercised as a nation. We look instead of play. We ride instead of walk. Our existence deprives us of the minimum of physical activity essential for healthy living. ~~ John F. Kennedy

There is one advantage of being poor -- a doctor will cure you faster. ~~ Kin Hubbard

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. ~~ Florence Nightingale

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals. ~~ William Osler

Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and foreboding. ~~ Norman Cousins

There are two kinds of people: those who are always well and those who are always sick. Most of the evils of the world come from the first sort and most of the achievements from the second. ~~ Louis Dudek

Doctors are busy playing God when so few of us have the qualifications. And besides, the job is taken. ~~ Bernie S. Siegel, MD

So you have a kinder, more adaptable friend in the food world than soup? Who soothes you when you are ill? … Soup does its loyal best … You don't catch steak hanging around when you're poor and sick, do you? ~~ Judith Martin

A good dog is a medicine for melancholy and a better stress reliever than Valium. ~~ Dean Koontz [Fear Nothing]

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience. ~~ Sydney Smith

As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid. ~~ Jean de la Bruyere

Pain is one of life's great lessons. You need to know how you'll react to the negatives in your life. Only then will you learn from the pain, and the next time it happens, you can speed up your healing process. ~~ Terry Bradshaw

The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind. ~~ A. E. Housman

The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time. ~~ Edwin Bliss

Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself. ~~ Sydney J. Harris

I told my doctor I get very tired when I go on a diet, so he gave me pep pills. Know what happened? I ate faster. ~~ Joe E. Lewis

A hospital should also have a recovery room adjoining the cashier's office. ~~ Francis O. Walsh

Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them. ~~ Susan Sontag

The history of medicine is a story of amazing foolishness and amazing intelligence. ~~ Jerome Tarshis

Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other. ~~ Lawrence Durrell

And almost everyone when age,
Disease or sorrows strike him,
Inclines to think there is a God,
Or something very like him. ~~ Arthur Hugh Clough

[Explaining how he felt after being hit on the head by a ball in the 1934 World Series:] The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing. ~~ Dizzy Dean

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth. ~~ John Steinbeck

There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow. ~~ Orison Marden

Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust. ~~ Don Herold

The entire economy of the Western world is built on things that cause cancer. ~~ Bliss [film, 1985]

I observe the physician with the same diligence as he the disease. ~~ John Donne

Healing is nature's way of telling you that you really do matter. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant

The private patient pays to avoid waiting. The NHS [National Health Service] patient waits to avoid paying. ~~ Richard Gordon

The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible. ~~ Jean Kerr

Nature [is] that lovely lady to whom we owe polio, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, [and] cancer. ~~ Stanley N. Cohen

Society is a hospital of incurables. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The one way to get thin is to reestablish a purpose in life … Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment. ~~ Cyril Connolly

We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering. ~~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

A person often catches a cold when a mother-in-law comes to visit. Patients mentioned mothers-in-law so often that we came to consider them a common cause of disease in the United States. ~~ Thomas Holmes

As soils are depleted, human health, vitality and intelligence go with them. ~~ Louis Bromfield

What some people call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than disease. ~~ George Dennison Prentice

Mental health problems do not affect three out of every four persons but one out of one. ~~ Dr. William Menninger

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

If you treat a sick child like an adult and a sick adult like a child, everything usually works out pretty well. ~~ Ruth Carlisle

The routine promotion of condoms through advertising has been stopped by networks who are so hypocritically priggish that they refuse to describe disease control as they promote disease transmission. ~~ Henry A. Waxman

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say; sanctity is the state about which theology has nothing to say. ~~ W. H. Auden

People who think time heals everything haven't tried sitting it out in a doctor's office. ~~ San Francisco Chronicle

If egoism were a disease, the world would be one big hospital. ~~ Unattributed

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy. ~~ Izaak Walton

For every ailment under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it. ~~ Mother Goose

Just old age. It's the only disease, Mr. Thompson, that you don't look forward to being cured of. ~~ Citizen Kane (film, 1941)

Choose your specialist and choose your disease. ~~ Westminster Gazette

One should treat one's fate as one does one's health; enjoy it when it is good, be patient with it when it is poorly, and never attempt any drastic cure save as an ultimate resort. ~~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

It is easy when we are well to give good advice to the sick. ~~ Terence

If an apple a day
Keeps the doctor away,
They'll soon be condemned
By the AMA. ~~ Joan Liftin

Fall sick and you will know who is your friend and who is not. ~~ New England proverb

If nature was really interested in our welfare, it would have made health catching instead of disease. ~~ Sydney J. Harris

The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning. ~~ Lewis Thomas

Since I came to the White House, I got two hearing aids, a colon operation, skin cancer, a prostate operation, and I was shot. The damn thing is I've never felt better in my life. ~~ Ronald Reagan

… to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part. ~~ The Book of Common Prayer

he best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter -- he's got to just know. ~~ Will Rogers

Preserving the health by too severe a rule is a wearisome malady. ~~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Attitude is everything on recovery from cancer. You gotta have 'tude if you expect to take a licking and come back ticking. Tumor humor is not warm and friendly, it's scrappy and sometimes nasty and tasteless, a sort of chemotherapy for the spirit -- necessary but (not always) nice. The most important part of a fighting attitude is humor, because it keeps you loose. ~~ Robert Lipsyte (cancer patient)

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. ~~ Mark Twain