Quotes about health and diseases

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“It’s is the old who age a day every hour”

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 85 (Vintage 2003)

“The emptiness of old age had caused him to forget that, in matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 69 (Vintage 2003)

“The man changed position, turned his back on the wardrobe blocking the door and let his right arm slide down toward the side on which the dog is lying. A minute later, he was awake. He was thirsty. He turned on his bedside light, got up, shuffled his feet into the slippers which were, as always, providing a pillow for the dog's head, and went into the kitchen. Death followed him. The man filled a glass with water and drank it. At this point, the dog appeared, slaked his thirst in the water-dish next to the back door and then looked up at his master. I suppose you want to go out, said the cellist. He opened the door and waited until the animal came back. A little water remained in his glass. Death looked at it and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed. She would have been equally incapable of imagining it when she'd had to make people die of thirst in the desert, but at the time she hadn't even tried. The dog returned, wagging his tail. Let's go back to sleep, said the man. They went into the bedroom again, the dog turned around twice, then curled up into a ball. The man drew the sheet up to his neck, coughed twice and soon afterward was asleep again. Sitting in her corner, death was watching. Much later, the dog got up from the carpet and jumped onto the sofa. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog on her lap.”

José Saramago book Death with Interruptions

Source: Death with Interruptions (2005), p. 172

“In order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead.”

José Saramago book All the Names

Source: All the Names (1997), p. 181

“In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

Source: 1960s-1980s, "Note on the problem of social costs", 1988, p. 185

“I am a vegetarian for health reasons—the health of the chicken.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Singer was very devoted to the vegetarian cause and was frequently quoted as saying this statement, as reported in Judaism and Vegetarianism by Richard H. Schwartz (New York: Lantern Books, 2001, ISBN 1-930051-24-7), p. 177 https://books.google.it/books?id=zo5TqKQVcEgC&pg=PA177

“What does your sorrow do while you sleep? -It’s awake and waiting. And when it loses patience, it wakes me up.”

Ivo Andrič (1892–1975) novelist, short story writer

“I mean, girlfriends are trouble at this age.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

MTV News "Justin Bieber Says 'Girlfriends Are Trouble'" http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1647976/justin-bieber-girlfriends-trouble.jhtml, 16 September, 2010

“It is not my purpose here to discuss the question of vegetarianism, or to meet the objections that may be urged against it; though it must be admitted that of these objections not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry. I, for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit themselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved or restored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Source: The Buried Temple (1902), Ch. III: "The Kingdom of Matter", § 5

“Only the actual conception of the divine nature changes according to the different ideas of perfection which prevail in particular ages and nations. The gods of the remoter ages of Greece and Rome, and those worshipped by our own earliest forefathers, were simply ideals of bodily strength and prowess. As the idea of sensuous beauty arose and gradually became refined, the sensuous personification of beauty was exalted to the throne of deity; and hence arose what we might call the religion of art. When men ascended from the sensuous to the purely spiritual, from the beautiful to the good and true, the sum of all moral and intellectual perfection became the object of their adoration, and religion became the province of philosophy.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 7

“When she [Philosophy] saw that the Muses of poetry were present by my couch giving words to my lamenting, she was stirred a while; her eyes flashed fiercely, and said she, "Who has suffered these seducing mummers to approach this sick man? Never do they support those in sorrow by any healing remedies, but rather do ever foster the sorrow by poisonous sweets. These are they who stifle the fruit-bearing harvest of reason with the barren briars of the passions: they free not the minds of men from disease, but accustom them thereto."”
Quae ubi poeticas Musas uidit nostro assistentes toro fletibusque meis uerba dictantes, commota paulisper ac toruis inflammata luminibus: Quis, inquit, has scenicas meretriculas ad hunc aegrum permisit accedere, quae dolores eius non modo nullis remediis fouerent, uerum dulcibus insuper alerent uenenis? Hae sunt enim quae infructuosis affectuum spinis uberem fructibus rationis segetem necant hominumque mentes assuefaciunt morbo, non liberant.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Prose I, lines 7-9; translation by W.V. Cooper
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book I

“For if vicious propensity is, as it were, a disease of the soul like bodily sickness, even as we account the sick in body by no means deserving of hate, but rather of pity, so, and much more, should they be pitied whose minds are assailed by wickedness, which is more frightful than any sickness.”
Nam si uti corporum languor ita vitiositas quidam est quasi morbus animorum, cum aegros corpore minime dignos odio sed potius miseratione iudicemus, multo magis non insequendi sed miserandi sunt quorum mentes omni languore atrocior urguet improbitas.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Prose IV; line 42; translation by H. R. James
Alternate translation:
For as faintness is a disease of the body, so is vice a sickness of the mind. Wherefore, since we judge those that have corporal infirmities to be rather worthy of compassion than of hatred, much more are they to be pitied, and not abhorred, whose minds are oppressed with wickedness, the greatest malady that may be.
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book IV

“These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly,
Waking in the dawn of the morning,
In the evening will be a pitiful frivolity,
Sleeping in the cold night’s arms.”

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) Spanish dramatist

Éstas que fueron pompa y alegría<br>despertando al albor de la mañana,<br>a la tarde serán lástima vana<br>durmiendo en brazos de la noche fría. <br class="br"> A las flores ("Éstas, que fueron pompa y alegría") http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/A_las_flores_%28Calder%C3%B3n_de_la_Barca%29.

“… it is true, even people with painful childhoods… grow up to be more interesting people. So, there's always a positive to a negative.”

Barbra Streisand (1942) American singer, actress, writer, film producer, and director