Quotes about illness
page 3

“We create our fate every day… most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Truth, History, Childhood

“There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won’t complain.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Dead

“We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Love, Failure

“So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,
An intolerable waiting,
A longing for another place and time,
Another condition.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Source: Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse

Time, Waiting

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Durant, Will. Commencement Speech. We Have a Right To Be Happy Today https://web.archive.org/web/20130106111821/http://www.willdurant.com/youth.htm. Webb School of Claremont, CA. 7 Jun 1958. <br class="br">Context: To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.

Way

“To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

World

“After a moment, he turned sharply to me. 'Are you quite all right?'

'Yes, perfectly. Why do you ask?'

'Because I have just called you contrary and you did not bother to contradict me. I thought you might be ill.”

Deanna Raybourn (1968) American writer

Source: Silent on the Moor

“You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

Boy

“I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.”

Joanna Russ book How to Suppress Women's Writing

Source: How to Suppress Women's Writing

Health, Personality

“The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Fear, Decision, Suicide

“Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.”

Gustave Flaubert Memoirs of a Madman

Source: Memoirs of a Madman

Knowledge, Madness

“To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefor unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

From books
Source: Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, 2001

Death, Pain, People, Feeling

“The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!”

Wilkie Collins book Armadale

Source: Armadale

Books

“If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Variant: If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it...

Water

“Having waited my entire life to get an award for something, anything… I now get awards all the time for being mentally ill. It’s better than being bad at being insane, right? How tragic would it be to be runner-up for Bipolar Woman of the Year?”

Carrie Fisher book Wishful Drinking

Source: Wishful Drinking

Life, Time, Waiting

“Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Life, People, Sense

“Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can't overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

People, Way, Nature

“Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Thinking

“Bad enough to be ill, but to feel compelled to deny the very thing that, in its worst and most active state, defines you is agony indeed.”

Sally Brampton (1955–2016) British writer

Source: Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

Feeling

“There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.”

Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World

Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

World, Understanding, Question, Cry

“People who say not to speak ill of the dead are hypocrites, because you can take it ot the bank they're thinking ill.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: High Noon

People, Thinking, Dead

“Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 62, st. 3.
Source: A Shropshire Lad (1896)

World, Chance, Sun, Training

“Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Challenger Deep

Dead

“The time comes when each of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Life, Men, Pain, Youth

“As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty or hunger.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech at the International Conference on Financing for Development (March 2002) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2002/ing/f210302i.html

Hunger

“Sooner or later everything you thought you'd left behind comes around again. For good or ill, it comes around again.”

Stephen King Insomnia

Source: Insomnia

“I think many people ill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Variant: I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.
Source: Girl, Interrupted

People, Thinking

“Most bad," the host concluded. "If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them.”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

Love, Women, Men, People

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin , Volume One 1931-1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, Children, Pleasure, Books

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

"A First Word" <br class="br"> A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934)

Happiness, Way, Change, Past

“(On his gravestone): "I told you I was ill".”

Spike Milligan (1918–2002) British-Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor

His epitaph
Variant: I told you I was ill.

“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Life, Fate

“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Country

“It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 33

Life, People, Disease, Way

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book II, vii, 5
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Thinking, Sea

“War is an ill thing, as I surely know. But 'twould be an ill world for weaponless dreamers if evil men were not now and then slain.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Men, War, World, Evil

“Not even I can see all ends, but I have been in this world long enough to know that a choice is not choice and breeds slow ills, even were it done for the highest reasons.”

Alison Croggon book The Riddle

Source: The Riddle

World

“The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic
with divine creatures
who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Pleasures of the Damned

Past, Help

“I always wake when you do, Sassenach; I sleep ill without ye by my side.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Sleep

“When a country is well governed, poverty and a mean condition are things to be ashamed of. When a country is ill governed, riches and honor are things to be ashamed of.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Chapter VIII

Country

“claire:dont do anything dumb or ill kill you myself
shane:ouch girl whatever happend to unconditional love around here”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Feast of Fools

Love, Girl

“Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990

Parting

“I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Love, Children

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

People, Understanding

“Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Wild Roses

“A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored young Highlander at close range is breath-taking.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

“I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Life, Fate

“He had the look of an atheist who’d just had a visit from God: stunned, disbelieving and faintly ill.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Claimed By Shadow

God

“Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

“Nostalgia is an illness
for those who haven't realized
that today
is tomorrow's nostalgia.”

Zeena Schreck (1963) Tantric Buddhist/Sethian

Nostalgia

“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired…”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720), on proving Christianity to unbelievers

“Death cures all ills. Well, most of them.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

Death

“I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.” He tottered piteously to the stairs. “Bury me beside Mrs. Pentstemmon,” he croaked as he went up then to bed.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

Feeling

“Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Rage, Singing

“The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

“I will tell you something about stories… They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”

Leslie Marmon Silko book Ceremony

Source: Ceremony

Death, Fools, Fight

“I read somewhere that 77 percent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 percent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.”

Jerry Garcia (1942–1995) American musician and member of the Grateful Dead

Reading

“I hear they feed you in Sing Sing,” Evie muttered. “Three squares a day.”

“Evangeline,” Will said with a sigh. “Charity begins at home.”

“So does mental illness.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

Home, Singing

“Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Depressing

“I do not know a better cure for mental illness than a book.”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

Books

“She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all.”

Gregory Maguire book Son of a Witch

Source: Son of a Witch

“The three saddest things are the ill wanting to be well, the poor wanting to be rich, and the constant traveler saying 'anywhere but here'.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Travel

“A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Personality

“Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

“[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Lie, Imagination, Heart

“Ill-fitting grammar are like ill-fitting shoes. You can get used to it for a bit, but then one day your toes fall off and you can't walk to the bathroom.”

Jasper Fforde book One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Source: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Shoe

“anymore time in that black hole and ill go insane.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Intertwined

Time

“At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Source: The Holy Terrors

World, Childhood

“Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.”

William Golding (1911–1993) British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Effort

“Sometimes I think depression should be called the coping illness. So many of us struggle on, not daring or knowing how to ask for help. More of us, terribly, go undiagnosed.”

Sally Brampton (1955–2016) British writer

Source: Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

Thinking, Help

“I've never known anyone more ill equipped for happiness. He wouldn't know what to do with it.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Tempt Me at Twilight

Happiness

“Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Game

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

Dagobert von Gerhardt (1831–1910) German writer

To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy."
"von Gerhardt, using the pen-name Gerhard von Amyntor in", A Commentary to the Book of Life. Quote taken from August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter X. Marriage as a Means of Support.

Love, Life, Death, God

“Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

People, Way

“There's a lot of mental illness in my family. So, if you catch schizophrenia, get four boxes of Mike and Ikes, a Bible, and a cage. Wait it out.”

Maria Bamford (1970) American actress and comedian

Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome (2009)

Family, Waiting, Box

“I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India's ills, and that her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

"A Word of Explanation" on his work Hind Swaraj (1908) in Young India (January 1921)
1920s

“Because of the counseling which ministers do, there are strenuous efforts to make inroads into the ministry. Be alert to the drive by certain analytical psychiatrists to have ministers accept their amoral philosophy. They opine those feelings of guilt and a sense of right and wrong cause mental illnesses. This entire concept is being discredited. There is far more mental health in the Judaic-Christian concept of resisting temptation and overcoming mistakes than ever emanated from the Freudian couch.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Health, Feeling, Sense, Effort

“When we are customarily annoyed by what we see as the failings of others, we are judging them by a ludicrous standard: we are assuming that they fully understand our desires, quite possibly better than we do, and that they have nothing to do but arrange things to fall seamlessly into place around our probably ill-communicated wishes.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Communication, Understanding

“I can think of a few microorganisms, possibly the tubercle bacillus, the syphilis spirochete, the malarial parasite, and a few others, that have a selective advantage in their ability to infect human beings, but there is nothing to be gained, in an evolutionary sense, by the capacity to cause illness or death. Pathogenicity may be something of a disadvantage for most microbes, carrying lethal risks far more frightening to them than to us. The man who catches a meningococcus is in considerably less danger for his life, even without chemotherapy, than meningococci with the bad luck to catch a man.”

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"Germs"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Life, Death, Bad luck, Thinking

“Recovering from an ill-starred romance is, after all, to anyone of sufficient will-power and self-respect, purely an attitude of mind.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert

Star

“The decline of Indian Buddhism was centrally due to the fact that it never offered the Indian laity a complete religion. Early Buddhism knew no ceremonies for birth and death, marriage, illness, and other critical turns of private life… Only for the community of monks did Buddhism provide a complete and well-defined way of life. …But Brahmins were needed for all the ordinary crises in life, ready with their rites and sacred formulas to ward off danger or minimize the damage. This elemental fact assured the survival of Brahminism in India.”

William H. McNeill book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)

Life, Death, Marriage, Religion

“The proposition has… been laid down in the most general terms, "All evils are negations." Thus for man death is evil; death is his non-existence. Illness, poverty, and ignorance are evils for man; all these are privations of properties…. The destruction of other things is likewise nothing but the absence of their form. After these propositions, it must be admitted as a fact that it cannot be said of God that He directly creates evil, or He has the direct intention to produce evil; this is impossible. His works are all perfectly good. He only produces existence, and all existence is good; whilst evils are of a negative character, and cannot be acted upon.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.10

Death, God, Evil

“My master ought to have remembered what
A glittering prize can do to bend the will,
Yet at the crucial moment he forgot
And all his fortune changed from good to ill.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Dovea in memoria avere il signor mio,
Che l'oro e 'l premio ogni durezza inchina;
Ma, quando bisognò, l'ebbe in oblio,
Ed ei si procacciò la sua ruina.
Canto XLIII, stanza 70 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Change

“My big claim to fame during the three years I was at Stratford was understudying Henry V and going on without any rehearsal — and I tell that story in the show. … Tyrone Guthrie, a great English director of that time, said to me — I was understudying Chris Plummer — and they said, "Plummer's ill. Can you go on?" And I had never rehearsed the part, never spoken the part out loud. And I went on.”

William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director

"It's Shatner's World and He Wants You to See It" http://www.npr.org/2012/02/18/147090053/its-shatners-world-and-he-wants-you-to-see-it, NPR, 18 Feb 2012

Time, Parting

“To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Women, People, World, Behavior

“In the history of madness, two events signal this change with singular clarity: in 1657, the founding of the Hôpital Général, and the Great Confinement of the poor; and in 1794, the liberation of the mad in chains at Bicêtre. Between these two singular and symmetrical events, something happened, whose ambiguity has perplexed historians of medicine: blind repression in an absolutist regime, according to some, and, according to others, the progressive discovery, by science and philanthropy, of madness in its positive truth. In fact, beneath these reversible meanings, a structure was taking shape, which did not undo that ambiguity but was decisive for it. This structure explains the passage from the medieval and humanist experience of madness to the experience that is our own, which confines madness in mental illness.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Preface to 1961 edition
History of Madness (1961)

Truth, History, Decision, Science

“I'm not disgusted. I'm a citizen of the United States of America and I'm no second-class citizen either and no man here is, unless he thinks like one and reasons like one and performs like one. This is my country and I believe in her, and I will serve her, and I'll contribute to her welfare whenever and however I can. If she has any ills, I'll stand by her until in God's given time, through her wisdom and her consideration for the welfare of the entire nation, she will put them right.”

Daniel James Jr. (1920–1978) United States general

As quoted in The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in The Military (1998), by Gerald Astor, De Capo Press, pp. 440–443

Wisdom, God, Thinking, Time

“Well, I think comparing Common Lisp to Scheme is prima facie evidence of ill will, even if Common Lisp wins. It is somewhat like a supposed compliment like "man, you are even smarter than George W. Bush."”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Setting a property in a symbol http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/80bdf64552957f61 (Usenet article). <br class="br">Usenet articles, Lisp

Thinking

“I know no better way, my dearest Edward, of thanking you for your affectionate concern for me during my illness than by telling you myself, as soon as possible, that I continue to get better. I will not boast of my handwriting; neither that nor my face have yet recovered their proper beauty, but in other respects I am gaining strength very fast. I am now out of bed from 9 in the morning to 10 at night: upon the sofa, 'tis true, but I eat my meals with Aunt Cass in a rational way, and can employ myself, and walk from one room to another. Mr. Lyford says he will cure me, and if he fails, I shall draw up a memorial and lay it before the Dean and Chapter, and have no doubt of redress from that pious, learned, and disinterested body.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to J. Edward Austen (1817-05-27) [Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family Record]
Letters

Beauty, Way, Learning, Memory

“Let us watch this de Kooning [leading Abstract-Expressionist painter in New York] with his prematurely white hair making his great sleepwalker's movements, as though he was waiting in a dream to open bays of Biscay, to explode islands like pieces of orange or Parma violets, to tear continents from a cerulean blue split by oceans of Naples yellow.... if by good or by ill fortune, in the middle of this Dionysian demiurg the image of 'The Eternal Feminine should appear.. the least that might have happened to her would be that she should emerge (from all this chaos) wearing nothing but a little make-up.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Dali's comment on the 'Woman-paintings', c. 1960 [a.o. Woman-III ] of the American abstract-expressionist painter Willem de Kooning: (MPC 75); as cited in Dali and Me, Catherine Millet, (translated by Trista Selous), Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 8001 Zurich Switzerland, p. 135
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1951 - 1960

Dreams, Tear, Appearance, Waiting

“Preserving your health by too strict a diet is a tedious illness.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

C'est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime.
Maxim 72 of the Maximes supprimées.
Later Additions to the Maxims

Health

“Here's the clear "science:"When the male sperm and female egg join, a new and unique life form is created. At conception. Not at birth or viability, or when a lawyer says so. At conception this happens. John McCain got it right; Obama pled less scientific knowledge than a 5th grader.This life is either human or something else. Science irrefutably would declare that the life which is starting from that moment is human. It's not a stalk of broccoli, it's not a parrot, squirrel, or dolphin. It will never become a tree—it can only become a human. It has the entire DNA schedule that it will have for the rest of its life right then. In days it will begin to take on increasingly observable human characteristics and form, but at conception, it is biologically human.If this life is human, then the only issue left is whether this human life falls under the notion that it has a fundamental right of existence or not. If not, it is because we as a culture have decided that some human lives are simply not worth living. If we can decide that about an innocent and unborn baby, we can also decide it on the basis of less absolute criteria than that. If we make that choice (and this is all about "CHOICE," isn’t it?) then someone may decide that a terminally ill person is not a life worth living. Maybe a severely disabled child is a life not worth living; what about a person with a limited IQ? Say that's absurd—that an educated and enlightened society would never be so audacious as to begin to terminate life based on such arbitrary excuses? Maybe you haven't studied Nazi Germany, in which the murder of six million Jews was justified because of their religion and millions of others were murdered because of their politics. Germany was not a primitive, superstitious culture. It was one filled with the intelligentsia and enlightened.This is an important issue. It's why we can't trust Obama with America's future because he's not even sure which Americans are worth saving and which ones aren't. And it's why that for many of us, McCain's selection of a running mate really does matter. Because John McCain clearly is pro life, I will support and vote for him because Obama is not an option for me as a pro life person. I will be disappointed if McCain doesn't pick a true pro life person and realize that should that happen, he will lose many of the very people who supported me. I cannot expect all of you to vote for McCain if he chooses someone whose record isn't pro life. It will be a less than perfect decision for all of us—our only real choices are McCain and Obama; one will protect life and one won't. Some will argue for a 3rd party candidate and I respect that, but in political realities, that is essentially a vote for Obama and I can't go there.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

A Message from the Governor
HuckPAC
2008-08-23
http://www.huckpac.com/?Fuseaction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=1848&CommentPage=5
2011-03-01

Life, People, Education, Religion

“When a man is ill it is not necessarily because he wants to be ill subconsciously. It is not necessarily because he is receiving some hidden psychological benefit, or because the illness fulfills some need. He is ill often - always in fact - because of a distortion that is occurring within the self, and materialized in physical form.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 297, Page 136
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 7

“As it was ordered, all fell out aright,
For seldom ill design is schemed in vain.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Come ordine era dato, il tutto avvenne,
Che 'l consiglio del mal va raro invano.
Canto XXI, stanza 48 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“We in this country, as in other Liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian States who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#column_365 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement <br class="br">The 1930s

Perfection, Country

“The case for vegetarians - plants cure illnesses (heard of Ayurveda). Animal diets cause most illnesses (heard of the China Study.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 88
The Other Wife (2003)

Study, Animals

“I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. … Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated. Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images … So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; … worn death 'as close as dungarees', appreciated it - and life - more; seen the finest and most terrible in people … But, normal or manic, I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know. And I think much of this is related to my illness - the intensity it gives to things”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

An Unquiet Mind

Love, Life, Death, People

Quotes about illness page 3

Quotes about illness
page 3