Axel Munthe: Man

Axel Munthe was Swedish physician. Explore interesting quotes on man.

Axel Munthe: 30 quotes19 likes

“In former days all animals could speak and so could the flowers, the trees and the stones and all lifeless things who were all created by the same God who had created man. Therefore man should be kind to all animals, and treat all lifeless things as if they could still hear and understand. On the day of the Last Judgement the animals would be called in first by God to give evidence against the dead man. Only after the animals had had their say would his fellow creatures be called in as witnesses.”

Axel Munthe book The Story of San Michele

Source: The Story of San Michele (1929), Ch. VII

“I was not a good doctor, my studies had been too rapid, my hospital training too short, but there is not the slightest doubt that I was a successful doctor. What is the secret of success? To inspire confidence. What is confidence?… I do not know, I only know that it cannot be acquired by book reading, nor by the bedside of our patients. It is a magic gift granted by birth-right to one man and denied to another. The doctor who possesses this gift can almost raise the dead.”

“A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts and to the singing of a bird outside his window and to the far-away voice of the sea.”

Axel Munthe book The Story of San Michele

Preface, 1928
The Story of San Michele (1929)