“Etymologically, patient means sufferer. It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades. That illness can be not an epic of suffering but the occasion of some kind of self-transcendence is affirmed by sentimental literature and, more convincingly, by case histories offered by doctor-writers. Some illnesses seem more apt than others for this kind of meditation.”

Source: AIDS and Its Metaphors, (1989), ch. 4, p. 125, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42013-7 ; later published in combination with Illness As Metaphor. This combined edition is the one referenced here.

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Susan Sontag 168
American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933–2004

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“It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.”

AIDS and Its Metaphors, (1989), ch. 4, p. 125, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42013-7
AIDS and Its Metaphors was later published in combination with Illness As Metaphor. This combined edition is the one referenced here.

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“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

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Fragment 267 https://books.google.com/books?id=OxlHAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA233&dq=%22The+man+who+does+ill,+ill+must+suffer+too.%22 (trans. by Plumptre)

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“So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor.”

Variant translations:
Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment.
The violence which assails good men to test them, to cleanse and purify them, effects in the wicked their condemnation, ruin, and annihilation.
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