Quotes about illness (1260 quotes, page 8)

“354. He that hath no ill fortune is troubled with good.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

L'on doit se taire sur les puissants: il y a presque toujours de la flatterie à en dire du bien; il y a du péril à en dire du mal pendant qu'ils vivent, et de la lâcheté quand ils sont morts.
Aphorism 56
Les Caractères (1688), Des grands

Dead

“As well as the greatest optimist I see the lark soaring in the spring air, but I also see a young girl of about twenty, who might have been in good health, a victim to consumption, and who will perhaps drown herself before she dies of an illness. If one is always in respectable company among rather well-to-do bourgeois one does not notice this so much perhaps, but if one has dined for years on 'la vache enragee', as I did, one cannot deny that great misery is a fact that weighs down the scale.”

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

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Antwerp Belgium, Winter 1886; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 453), p. 38
1880s, 1886

Health , Girl , Spring

“The music that can deepest reach,
And cure all ill, is cordial speech.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Merlin's Song II
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Music

“As Carl Jung said, avoidance of legitimate suffering is the root of all mental illness. And one truth you must suffer is that everything and everyone you love will eventually die.
Even gods.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 2 “Facing the Ultimate Archenemy” (p. 57)

Love , God , Truth , Suffering

“It must be fundamentally wrong to reduce production of food and fiber while one-third of our population is still ill fed and ill clothed.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part IV, Chapter XVI, Reservoir Plan Versus Crop Control, p. 195
Storage and Stability (1937)

Food , Clothes

“Some years ago, an American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, felt the same kind of instinctive revolt against the 'atmosphere' of Freudian psychology, with its emphasis on sickness and neurosis, and decided that he might obtain some equally interesting results if he studied extremely healthy people. He therefore looked around for the most cheerful and well-adjusted people he could find, and asked for their co-operation in his studies. He soon discovered and interesting fact: that most extremely healthy people frequently experience of intense affirmation and certainty; Maslow called these 'peak experiences.' No one had made this discovery before because it had never struck anyone that a science calling itself 'psychology' and professing to be a science of the human mind (not merely the sick mind), ought to form its estimate of human beings by taking into account healthy minds as well as sick ones. A sick man talks obsessively about his illness; a healthy man never talks about his health; for as Pirandello points out, we take happiness for granted, and only begin to question life when we are unhappy. Hence no psychologist ever made this simple and obvious discovery about peak experiences.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), p. 15

Life , People , Health , Question

“If then the Courts of justice are to be considered as the bulwarks of a limited Constitution, against Legislative encroachments, this consideration will afford a strong argument for the permanent tenure of Judicial offices, since nothing will contribute so much as this to that independent spirit in the Judges, which must be essential to the faithful performance of so arduous a duty. This independence of the Judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals, from the effects of those ill humors, which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the People themselves, and which, though they speedily give place to better information, and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the mean time, to occasion dangerous innovations in the Government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Men , People , Faith , Justice

“We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

As quoted in The Home Book of Quotations, Classical and Modern (1958)

“The Church has been reproached with endeavouring to appropriate to itself all those professorships in our Universities which are connected with science: it is however certain that the larger portion of these ill-remunerated offices have been filled by clergymen.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 225

Universe , Science

“But when mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto III, line 125.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

“Psychiatrist R. D. Laing, among others, has said that the growing incidence of mental illness these days may be explained in part by the fact that the world we call real and which we ask people to live within and understand is itself open to question. The environment we live in is no longer connected to the mix of planetary processes which brought us all into being. It is solely the product of human mental processes. It is real, but only in the way that a theatrical play or a fun house is real. Our artificial environment is there and we can experience it, yet it has been created on purpose by other humans. It is an interpretation of reality; it no longer reveals how nature works and it cannot provide much useful information to human beings who seek to see their own lives as part of some wider natural process. We are left with no frame of reference untouched by human interpretation.”

Jerry Mander (1936) American activist

Source: Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), p. 87

People , World , Way , Understanding

“The heroic virtues of some great men have been the cause of the corruption of eloquence, or have, at least, enervated the style of most preachers. Instead of joining with the people in rendering thanks to Heaven for the extraordinary gifts it has bestowed on those great men, these very preachers have enrolled themselves among authors and poets, and become panegyrists; they have even uttered more extravagant praises than are found in dedications, verses, or prologues; they have turned the Word of God into a whole warp of praises, which, though well deserved, are out of place, bestowed from selfish motives, not required, and ill-suited to their calling. It is fortunate indeed, if, while they are celebrating their heroes in the sanctuary, they even mention the name of that God or of that religion they ought to preach. Some have wished to preach the Gospel, which is for all men, only to one person, and have been so disconcerted when by accident that person was kept away, that they were unable to pronounce a Christian discourse before an assembly of Christian men, because it was not prepared for them, so that other orators have been obliged to take their places, who had only sufficient leisure to praise God in an extemporary exhortation.!”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Of the Pulpit (13)
Les Caractères (1688)

Men , God , People , Religion

“Again and again, the altruist has arisen in politics, has bidden us share with others the product of our toil, and has proclaimed the communistic dogma as the panacea for our social ills. So today, amid the buried hopes and buried projects of the past, the doctrine of communism still lives in the minds of men. Under stress of misfortune, or in dread of tyranny, it is still preached in modern times as Plato preached it in the world of the Greeks.
Yet it is indeed doubtful whether, in the history of mankind, a doctrine was ever taught more impracticable or more false to the principles it professes than this very doctrine of communism. In a world where self-interest is avowedly the ruling motive, it seeks to establish at once an all-reaching and all-controlling altruism. In a world where every man is pushing and fighting to outstrip his fellows, it would make him toil with like vigor for their common welfare. In a world where a man's activity is measured by the nearness of reward, it would hold up a prospective recompense as an equal stimulant to labor. … In the future, when the remoteness of his reward shall have weakened the laborer's zeal, we shall be able to judge more fairly of the blessings that the communist offers.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Other writings, The Altruist in Politics (1889)

Men , World , Hope , History

“I have received your critical essay [of C. L. Ragghianti who visited Morandi's studio frequently and watched him painting] for the catalogue of the Mattioli collection. I must confess that I am not a little disturbed by what you say. I shall say no more. My own desire is to continue to live with a little peace, which is the only thing that still allows me to work. I am sure I am worth much less than what you say. Not out of modesty, believe me. I only wish it were as you say. If you could, please avoid the comparison with Picasso. Furthermore I must point out an error of fact where you say on p. 4 that 'for those who might not know, Morandi draws, tries out plans of his compositions, etc.., etc..' – and you have had the occasion to see the plans of objects on my table. This only serves to immediately recover my position when I reassemble a composition. Nothing more. Another thing…. [tracing the shape of his feet on the floor]…. it's to mark a reference for re-establishing the point of view. Think about this, then. I am grateful for your concern, but believe me when I say it leaves me ill at ease.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

from his letter of 6 April 1953; as quoted in Morandi 1894 – 1964, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco, Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2008; p. 44
1945 - 1964

Peace , Error , Thinking , Drawing

“You are very lovely now and soon you will be beautiful. Ant not in an ordinary way. Youth is always beautiful, but you are like some creatures of fairy born to bring ill to mortals. Only trouble can follow such gifts”

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Love , Youth , Beauty , Way

“I hope to compensate this year [in 1866 Roelofs was seriously ill] the damage of so little studies [watercolors and drawings] once and for all because most of the old ones I already used [for his oil-paintings]. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Ik hoop dit jaar [in 1866 is Roelofs ernstig ziek geweest] de schade van weinig studies [tekeningen en aquarellen] eens voor goed in te halen want de ouden raken zoowat op [gebruikt voor zijn olie-schilderijen].
In a letter to P. Verloren van Themaat, 10 May 1867; as cited in Willem Roelofs 1822-1897 De Adem der natuur, ed. Marjan van Heteren & Robert-Jan te Rijdt; Thoth, Bussum, 2006, p. 13 - ISBN13 * 978 90 6868 432 2
1860's

Hope , Study , Drawing , Painting

“Ibn 'Umar said, "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, took hold of my shoulders and said, "Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a traveller on the road." Ibn 'Umar used to say, 'In the evening, do not anticipate the morning, and in the morning do not anticipate the evening. Take from your health for your illness and from your life for your death."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 471
Sunni Hadith

Life , Death , Health , World

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life , Men , Fate , Children

“In the lap of hoary Europe lie her children ill at rest,
Reaching hands of supplication to their brethren of the West;
Pale about the lifeless fountain of their ancient freedom, wait
Till the angel move its waters and avenge their stricken state.
Let me then, a new crusader, to the eastward set my face,
Wake the fires of old tradition on each sacred altar-place,
Till a trodden people rouse them, with a clamor as divine
As the winds of autumn roaring through the clumps of forest-pine.
I myself would seize their banner; they should follow where it led,
To the triumph of the victors or the pallor of the dead.”

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) American poet, critic, and essayist

"Flood-Tide" (1860).

Children , People , Lie , Angels

“The Insubordinate Ritual:
The Candidate hands a previously prepared necklace to the person who will be the Recipient of the insubordination.
The Recipient places the necklace about his or her neck and kneeling before the candidate asks:
R: Will you test me as my Fool, so that all may understand?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Jester, if none else will criticize?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Chaplain, that no fault lie unremedied?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Confessor, lest I neglect my own progress?
C: I will.
R: Will you test me as my Inquisitor. if I exceed my authority?
C: I will.
R: Then how ill you be known?
C: As your ______ ______
R: Then take this necklace my ______ ______, to remind us of your duties.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

The Recipient then give the necklace to the Candidate. The Ritual is concluded by a brief barrage of insulting noises directed by all at the recipient.
p 212-213
Liber Kaos (1992)

Lie , Fools , Understanding , Personality

“It is my purpose nowhere in these remarks to make personal reproaches; I entertain no ill-will toward any human being, nor any brute, that I know of, not even the skunk across the way to which I referred. Least of all would I reproach the South. I honor her courage and fidelity. Even in a bad, a wicked cause, she shows a united front. All her sons are faithful to the cause of human bondage, because it is their cause. But the North - the poor, timid, mercenary, driveling North - has no such united defenders of her cause, although it is the cause of human liberty. None of the bright lights of the nation shine upon her section. Even her own great men have turned her accusers. She is the victim of low ambition - an ambition which prefers self to country, personal aggrandizement to the high cause of human liberty. She is offered up a sacrifice to propitiate southern tyranny - to conciliate southern treason.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

June 10, 1850 in a speech before Congress on the Fugitive Slave Act. Page 123, Vol. 1, Palmer http://web.archive.org/web/20131209113445/http://thaddeusstevenssociety.com/Quotes.html. In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens
1850s

Men , Faith , Way , Courage

“It is ill changing the creed to meet each rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, and refuses to be trifled with.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Arthur's commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Soul , Change

“I guess I shoulda closed my eyes
When U drove me 2 the place
Where your horses run free.
'Cuz I felt a little ill
When I saw all the pictures
Of the jockeys that were there before me.Believe it or not,
I started to worry
I wondered if I had enough class.
But it was Saturday night
I guess that makes it all right
And U say, "Baby, have U got enough gas?"”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Little Red Corvette
Song lyrics, 1999 (1982)

Horse , Baby , Night

“Of all the ills of man which can be successfully processed by Scientology, arthritis ranks near the top. In skilled hands, this ailment, though misunderstood and dreaded in the past, already has begun to become history. Twenty-five hours of Scientology by an auditor who fairly understands how to process arthritis can be said to produce an invariable alleviation of the condition. Some cases, even severe ones, have responded in as little as two hours of processing, according to reports from auditors in the field.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Journal of Scientology Issue 1-G, (1952).

History , Understanding , Past

“To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal. Individuals like myself are often called 'workaholics'. I question this term because that implies a pathological condition or an illness. If I do what I desire more than anything else in the world and which makes me happy, such work can never be an aberration.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 89.

World , Question , Happiness

“And second, medical space research may revolutionize the technology and the techniques of modern medicine. Whatever new devices are created, for example, to monitor our astronauts, to measure their heart activity, their breathing, their brain waves, their eye motion, at great distances and under difficult conditions, will also represent a major advance in general medical instrumentation. Heart patients may even be able to wear a light monitor which will sound a warning if their activity exceeds certain limits. An instrument recently developed to record automatically the impact of acceleration upon an astronaut's eyes will also be of help to small children who are suffering miserably from eye defects, but are unable to describe their impairment. And also by the use of instruments similar to those used in Project Mercury, this Nation's private as well as public nursing services are being improved, enabling one nurse now to give more critically ill patients greater attention than they ever could in the past.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, President John F. Kennedy's last formal speech and public words

Children , Light , Suffering , Past

“How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted – on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness… – is something that sociologists of science and popular culture have yet to fully explain.”

Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher

Paul Churchland. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. (1st ed.). MIT Press. 1995. pp. 181: Talking about Freudian analysis.

Failure , Science

“Almost half of the bankruptcies in the United States are connected to an illness in the family, whether people had health insurance or not. Middle-class Americans, who had the misfortune of either experiencing a medical emergency themselves or watching a family member suffer, were then forced to face the daunting task of pulling themselves out of debt. Bankruptcy law has allowed them to start over. It has given hope. Now this new law will put people on their own. Illness or emergency creates medical bills. We are telling the people that they themselves are to blame. At the same time, we are removing protections that would stay an eviction, that would keep a roof over the head of a working family. We allow the credit industry to trick consumers into using subprime cards, with exorbitant interest rate hikes and fees. Then we hand those same consumers over to an unforgiving prison of debt, to be put on a rack of insolvency and squeezed dry by the credit card industry. We are protecting the profits of the credit card industry instead of protecting the economic future of the American people. Americans are left on their own. That's what this Administration's "Ownership Society" is all about — you're on your own — and your ship is sinking.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (14 April, 2005) http://frwebgate5.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=240761331899+3+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

People , Health , Family , Law

“We resolved to end our poison-enquiries by tasting the venomous liquor. According, having diluted a quantity of it, with a very little warm water, several of us ventured to put some of it upon the tip of our tongues. We all agreed, that it tasted very sharp and fiery, as if the tongue had been struck through with something scalding or burning. This sensation went off in two or three hours: and one gentleman, who would not be satisfied without trying a large drop undiluted, found his tongue swelled with a little inflammation and the soreness lasted two days. But neither his nor our boldness was attended with any ill consequence.”

Richard Mead (1673–1754) British physician

Source: A Mechanical Account of Poisons (1702), p. 22

Water

“As indicated by its title "A History of Great Ideas in Abnormal Psychology", this book is not just concerned with the chronology of events or with biographical details of great psychiatrists and psychopathologists. It has as its main interest, a study of the ideas underlying theories about mental illness and mental health in the Western world. These are studied according to their historical development from ancient times to the twentieth century.
The book discusses the history of ideas about the nature of mental illness, its causation, its treatment and also social attitudes towards mental illness. The conceptions of mental illness are discussed in the context of philosophical ideas about the human mind and the medical theories prevailing in different periods of history. Certain perennial controversies are presented such as those between the psychological and organic approaches to the treatment of mental illness, and those between the focus on disease entities (nosology) versus the focus on individual personalities. The beliefs of primitive societies are discussed, and the development of early scientific ideas about mental illness in Greek and Roman times. The study continues through the medieval age to the Renaissance. More emphasis is then placed on the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, the enlightenment of the eighteenth, and the emergence of modern psychological and psychiatric ideas concerning psychopathology in the twentieth century.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Introduction text.
A History of Great Ideas in Abnormal Psychology, (1990)

Health , Books , Age , World

“There is no waste of any kind in the world that equals the waste from needless, ill-directed and ineffective motions, and their resulting unnecessary fatigue.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: "Motion Study as an Increase of National Wealth," 1915, p. 96

World

“Young girls sometimes make use of the expression: “Reading books to read one’s self.” They prefer a book that presents some resemblance to their own circumstances and experiences. It is true that we can never understand except through ourselves. Yet, when we want to understand a book, it should not be our aim to discover ourselves in that book, but to grasp clearly the meaning which its author has sought to convey through the characters presented in it. We reach through the book to the soul that created it. And when we have learned as much as this of the author, we often wish to read more of his works. We suspect that there is some connection running through the different things he has written and by reading his works consecutively we arrive at a better understanding of him and them. Take, for instance, Henrik Ibsen’s tragedy, “Ghosts.” This earnest and profound play was at first almost unanimously denounced as an immoral publication. Ibsen’s next work, “An Enemy of the People,” describes, as is well known the ill-treatment received by a doctor in a little seaside town when he points out the fact that the baths for which the town is noted are contaminated. The town does not want such a report spread; it is not willing to incur the necessary expensive reparation, but elects instead to abuse the doctor, treating him as if he and not the water were the contaminating element. The play was an answer to the reception given to “Ghosts,” and when we perceive this fact we read it in a new light. We ought, then, preferably to read so as to comprehend the connection between and author’s books. We ought to read, too, so as to grasp the connection between an author’s own books and those of other writers who have influenced him, or on whom he himself exerts an influence. Pause a moment over “An Enemy of the People,” and recollect the stress laid in that play upon the majority who as the majority are almost always in the wrong, against the emancipated individual, in the right; recollect the concluding reply about that strength that comes from standing alone. If the reader, struck by the force and singularity of these thoughts, were to trace whether they had previously been enunciated in Scandinavian books, he would find them expressed with quite fundamental energy throughout the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, and he would discern a connection between Norwegian and Danish literature, and observe how an influence from one country was asserting itself in the other. Thus, by careful reading, we reach through a book to the man behind it, to the great intellectual cohesion in which he stands, and to the influence which he in his turn exerts.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: On Reading: An Essay (1906), pp. 40-43

People , Books , Soul , Girl

“No civilization can progress to the stability of continuous survival without certain and sure command of knowledge such as that contained in Dianetics. For Dianetics, skillfully used, can do exactly what it claims. It can, in the realm of the individual, prevent or alleviate insanity, neurosis, compulsions and obsessions and it can bring about physical well-being, removing the basic cause of some 70% of man's illnesses. It can, in the field of the family, bring about better accord and harmony. It can, in the field of nations or smaller groups such as those of industry, improve management to a point where these pitifully inadequate ideologies, for which men fight and die with such frightening earnestness, can be laid aside in favor of a workable technology.”

L. Ron Hubbard book Science of Survival

Science of Survival (1951)

Men , Family , Knowledge , Fight

“See, the average number of people that die every year from taking herbs is zero. Every year about three people die from taking vitamins. Every year about 320 people die from taking over-the-counter drugs. About 9,000 people die from food-borne illnesses. And every year, 90,000 to 110,000 people die from taking correctly prescribed drugs. This is not counting the incorrectly prescribed!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

People , Food

“Illness must be considered to be as natural as health.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Health , Nature

“We are not so naive as some think of us; we do not believe that a neutral base will turn men into angels; we know quite well that the people who are evil will still be evil; but we believe that communication and relationships based on a neutral base will at least do away with the great mass of brutality and crimes which are caused not by ill will, but simply by mutual misunderstandings and impositions.”

Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof (1859–1917) Polish ophthalmologist and inventor of Esperanto

Address http://reto.cn/biblioteko/movado/zamenhof/paroladoj/uk2.htm to the Second World Congress of Esperanto, Geneve, Switzerland. 27 August 1906.

Men , People , Angels , Communication

“Ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Pain

“Anyone who criticisms Islam publicly can expect to be threatened with physical violence. If that's not terrorism, then what is it? In the world of the cultural terrorist, if you oppose the oppression of women and minorities, you're an enemy of religious freedom; if you despise violent superstition, you're a racist; and if you reject religious totalitarianism, you have a mental illness. Let me tell you something, when you get to the stage where anyone criticising your beliefs is automatically deemed to have a mental illness, that is a sure sign of mental illness.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Islamic cultural terrorism" (15 June 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=377kKBi6anQ
2011

Women , World , Freedom

“…and a little later comes the question that no one asks before acting or before speaking: 'Do I dare disturb the universe?', because everyone dares to do just that, to disturb the universe and to trouble it, with their small, quick tongues and their ill-intentioned steps.”

Javier Marías book Tu rostro mañana

...y un poco más tarde viene la pregunta que nadie se hace antes de obrar ni antes de hablar: ‘Do I dare disturb the universe?’, porque todo el mundo se atreve a ello, a turbar el universo y a molestarlo, con sus rápidas y pequeñas lenguas y con sus mezquinos pasos.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 2. Baile y sueño [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 2: Dance and Dream] (2004), p. 111

Question , Universe

“At present [1941], not taking my serious illness into account, I still hope to make something for the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution. - El Lissitzky, June 1941, Moscow Notes.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1926 - 1941, Autobiography of the artist' (1941)

Hope

“I will follow my instincts, be myself for good or ill, and see what will be the upshot. As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

attributed to a Muir "autobiographical notebook" in Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945), page 144
1870s

World , Bird , Learning , Singing

“It is only when we discard the idea of a deity, the idea of cruelty or goodness in nature, that we are able ever to bear with patience the ills of life.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

Life , Idea , Nature , Patience

“Mad smoke makes me able to quote
Soliciting ill editions of that murder I wrote.”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

Nas Is Coming
On Albums, It Was Written (1996)

Quotes , Madness

“Fundamentalism is not accidental but essential to Islam. It is inherent in those religious ideologies which are built on a narrow spiritual vision, have a limited psychic base, and which emphasise dogma and personalities, other than experience and impersonal truth. Islam's fundamentalism is rooted in its theology, its founder and his practices. It means that it will also have to be fought there. But this point is ill understood and, therefore, the struggle is at the best of times phoney war.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Ram Swarup, Swords to sell a god, ( 16 June 1992 in The Telegraph) quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. https://web.archive.org/web/20171026023112/http://www.bharatvani.org:80/books/foe/index.htm

War , Truth , Time , Personality

“It is a war of ideologies and struggle races. On one side stands National Socialism: ideology, founded on the values of our Germanic, Nordic blood. It is worth the world as we want to see: beautiful, orderly, fair, socially, a world that may be, still suffers some flaws, but overall a happy, beautiful world filled with culture, which is precisely Germany. On the other side stands the 180 millionth people, a mixture of races and peoples, whose names are unpronounceable, and whose physical nature is such that the only thing that they can do - is to shoot without pity or mercy. These animals, which are subjected to torture and ill-treatment of each prisoner from our side, which do not have medical care they captured our wounded, as do the decent men, you will see them for yourself. These people have joined a Jewish religion, one ideology, called Bolshevism, with the task of: having now Russian, half [located] in Asia, parts of Europe, crush Germany and the world. When you, my friends, are fighting in the East, you keep that same fight against the same subhumans, against the same inferior races that once appeared under the name of Huns, and later - 1,000 years ago during the time of King Henry and Otto I, - the name of the Hungarians, and later under the name of Tatars, and then they came again under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today they are called Russian under the political banner of Bolshevism.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Heinrich Himmler speaking in Stettin to soldiers of the SS (13 July 1941)
1940s

Men , War , People , World

“Painting in the chamber of a Prince who was indisposed, the Physician said, that he hoped bymeans of his Highness, to obtain also the favor of a picture by Salvator. The Prince made he request, and Salvator readily consented. The Physician then desired the Painter not to egin his picture till he had given him the idea, nd the design. Salvator made no reply; ut when the Physician called for pen and ink o write his prescription, he desired him to stop ill he should tell him what to write. The Docor, not comprehending his meaning, said * Signor Salvator, this is a business which conerns me, not you." "I would have you to know Mr. Doctor" replied Salvator, " that I can more easily instruct you in the cure of your tickt than you can me in the art I profess, being a much better Painter than you are a Physician.'*”

Peter Beckford (1643–1710) Governor of Jamaica

Hope , Art , Idea , Business

“Johnson observed, that "he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney."”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1770, p. 181
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“How bewitched I was! How could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. V, ch. 3
The Return of the Native (1878)

“Autism is a neuro-developmental disorder affecting so many around the world. Autism is not mental illness, these children and adults think differently. Albert Einstein they say was autistic. How many in the audience know that there are 38,000 autistic people in Sri Lanka? So we as entertainers, urge you all to ‘speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.’ Lets spread awareness of autism, particularly when numbers of autistic children are rising and we urge our government to also provide public services – who knows we may even produce Albert Einsteins if we provide education, health, specialist speech therapy for autistic children in our lovely island….”

Desmond de Silva Sri Lankan singer

Clickpress release http://www.clickpress.com/releases/Detailed/3033005cp.shtml (9 August 2009).

Love , Children , People , Health

“If you read Peter Farb's book, Man's Rise of Civilization, he goes through all these different cultures at first contact, and they very often figure out in very different ways, but typically the things that were in common among them, were that the idea of the accumulation of private property beyond your needs was considered a mental illness.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Thom Hartmann, in the documentary film "I Am" written, directed, and narrated by Tom Shadyac
Disputed

Books , Way , Idea , Reading

“Rachel was looking into the mirror at an angle of 45°, and so had a view of the face turned toward the room and the face on the other side, reflected in the mirror; here were time and reverse-time, co-existing, cancelling one another exactly out. Were there many such reference points, scattered throughout the world, perhaps only at nodes like this room which housed a transient population of the imperfect, the dissatisfied; did real time plus virtual or mirror-time equal zero and thus serve some half-understood moral purpose? Or was it only the mirror world that counted; only a promise of a kind that the inward bow of a nose-bridge or a promontory of extra cartilage at the chin meant a reversal of ill fortune such that the world of the altered would thenceforth run on mirror-time; work and love by mirror-light and be only, till death stopped the heart's ticking (metronome's music) quietly as light ceases to vibrate, an imp's dance under the century's own chandeliers….”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Two, Part I

Love , Death , World , Music

“Groundless superstition ill becomes an army; Valour is the only deity that rules in the warrior's breast.”
Deforme sub armis vana superstitio est: dea sola in pectore Virtus bellantum viget.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book V, lines 125–127
Punica

“To arm a hand more powerful than your own
Is an ill method to maintain the throne.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Non è la via di dominar, se vuoi
Por l'arme in mano a chi può più di noi.
Canto XX, stanza 52 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“Abu Hurayra reported the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Race to good actions as fast as you can. What are you waiting for except delayed poverty, oppressive wealth, debilitating illness, dottering senility, a swift death or the Dajjal? Or are you waiting for an unseen evil, or the Last Hour? The Last Hour will be most bitter and terrible."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 578
Sunni Hadith

Death , Peace , Evil , Waiting

“One of the early presidents of Harvard College wrote a dissertation on the question, "Whether angels speak any language; if so, whether it is Hebrew." Much futile discussion on such questions has at various times brought debating into ill repute. A question should offer something more than an ingenious exercise; it should offer the chance of arriving at some conclusion regarded by the particular audience or disputants as of some practical importance. It should be discarded if, like the proposition, "The pen is mightier than the sword/' it offers no possibility of arriving at reasonably sound conclusions through the process of argument.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. 4-5; as cited in: Branham (2013, p. 32-33)

Angels , Exercises , Question , Chance

“In the heat of our pursuit for fundamental human rights, Black people have been continually cautioned to be patient. We are advised that as long as we remain faithful to the existing democratic order, the glorious moment will eventually arrive when we will come into our own as full-fledged human beings. But having been taught by bitter experience, we know that there is a glaring incongruity between democracy and the capitalist economy which is the source of our ills. Regardless of all rhetoric to the contrary, the people are not the ultimate matrix of the laws and the system which govern them—certainly not Black people and other nationally oppressed people, but not even the mass of whites. The people do not exercise decisive control over the determining factors of their lives.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

People , Faith , Law , Exercises

“I’ll sing you a song of the long ago -
Seven shine the shiners, oh!
What did the Seven do way back when?
Why, they wove the Charter then!
Five for the warp, from beginning to end.
Two for the woof, to make and mend.
That’s the Seven, but what of the Nine-
What of the two who chose not to shine?
The Eighth did hide, hide all away,
But the Seven caught him and made him pay.
The Ninth was strong and fought with might,
But lone Orannis was put out of the light,
Broken in two and buried under hill,
Forever to lie there, wishing us ill.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), pp. 525-526.

Lie , Way , Light , Strong

“You see how even an illness can be romanticized. Tuberculosis got the treatment: Keats, the Lady of the Camellias, the foggy dew, and so on. We must make romantic literature out of cancer -- can you imagine that?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Dear Boullée

Imagination , Literature

“Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.”

Chelsea Manning (1987) United States Army soldier and whistleblower

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Question , Cry

“I always fall in love with someone while I'm working in a film. It's a joy to get up in the morning. Sometimes when I'm not infatuated, I just make things up in my mind. Making a film is such an intense thing. You're eliminating everything in your life and you're absorbed into the world of the movie. It's exciting. It's like somebody saying you have an illness and you only have this short time to live. Then you live it that life is over with. Good-bye. You never see any of the people again. But meanwhile you have this short life in which you can do and feel and fantasize about all kinds of things because you know it will soon be over. So I always fall in love. Then you slip out of it, like a skin you take off, and you're naked and you're cold but it's exciting because there is going to be something new. My relationships are as intense and as giving and as short as my parts are. I would pump everything into a person. I would give my left arm that it was for life, but it dies so shortly. And when it dies, it doesn't even leave traces. The relationship vanishes into space. When I finish a part, it's the same feeling. I leave people and people leave me, I leave parts and parts leave me. I say it is 'the flow of life,' but it affects me terribly. Every once in a while I have such a breakdown, question every move.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

Love , Life , People , World

“He looked up startled, and saw in her face that which gave him a view into a strange new world. He had thought that women blushed when they talked of love, but her eyes were as grave and candid as a boy's. Here was one who had gone through waters so deep that she had lost the foibles of sex. Love to her was only a word of ill omen, a threat on the lips of brutes, an extra battalion of peril in an army of perplexities.”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Source: Huntingtower (1922), Ch. 10

Love , Women , World , Sex

“766. Better suffer ill than doe ill.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Suffering

“Nigel Farage is still trying to whip up fear and hatred towards refugees who are fleeing from conflict. It was extremely ill-judged of him to describe himself as a victim.”

Yvette Cooper (1969) British politician

Response on Farage's denial for being responsible for whipping up hate against immigrants - Nigel Farage says he is a victim of poltical hatred in response to Jo Cox question http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-jo-cox-dead-murdered-peston-brexit-eu-referendum-ukip-political-hatred-a7089996.html (19 June 2016)

Fear

“I will repeat then, Sir, that it is not this treaty, it is the Earl of Shelburne alone whom the movers of this question are desirous to wound. This is the object which has raised this storm of faction; this is the aim of the unnatural coalition to which I have alluded. If, however, the baneful alliance is not already formed, if this ill-omened marriage is not already solemnized, I know a just and lawful impediment, and, in the name of the public safety, I here forbid the banns.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

John Almon and John Debrett, "Register of Parliament".
Speech in the House of Commons, 21 February 1783. Referring to the Fox-North Coalition which was already agreed in outline.

Marriage , Law , Question

“Utu, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer! Hero, 's son, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer! Utu, you have let me come up into the mountains in the company of my brothers. In the mountain cave, the most dreadful spot on earth, let me be ill no longer! Here where there is no mother, there is no father, there is no acquaintance, no one whom I value, my mother is not here to say "Alas, my child!" My brother is not here to say "Alas, my brother!" … Don't make me flow away like water in a violent death! Don't make me eat saltpetre as if it were barley! Don't make me fall like a throw-stick somewhere in the desert unknown to me! Afflicted with a name which excites my brothers' scorn, let me be ill no longer! Afflicted with the derision of my comrades, let me be ill no longer! Let me not come to an end in the mountains like a weakling!”

Lugalbanda

In Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE). http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.1#

Death , Mountain , Affliction , Water

“Ill habits gather by unseen degrees —
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XV, The Worship of Aesculapius (1700), lines 155–156.

Sea

“When they dug the body out of the alley, it made even the hardened construction workers and emergency squad cops ill. Not one bone was left unbroken. The very flesh seemed to have been masticated as if by a nation of cannibal dogs. Even so, the three inured excavators who finally used winding sheets and shovels to bring the shapeless mess up from its five-foot grave agreed that it was incredible, totally past belief, that the head and face were untouched.
And they all agreed that the expression on the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

This last line has often been paraphrased: "You can live in your dreams, but only if you are worthy of them."
Delusion for a Dragon Slayer (1966)

Dogs , Dreams , Sense , Loss

“Now he conducted her through his armouries where he kept his weapons and weapons for his fighting men and all panoply of war. There he showed her swords and spears, maces and axes and daggers, orfreyed and damascened and inlaid with jewels; byrnies and baldricks and shields; blades so keen, a hair blown against them in a wind should be parted in twain; charmed helms on which no ordinary sword would bite. And Juss said unto the Queen, "Madam, what thinkest thou of these swords and spears? For know well that these be the ladder's rungs that we of Demonland climbed up by to that signiory and principality which now we hold over the four corners of the world." She answered, "O my lord, I think nobly of them. For an ill part it were while we joy in the harvest, to contemn the tools that prepared the land for it and reaped it."”

Eric Rücker Eddison book The Worm Ouroboros

Ch. 33 : Queen Sophonisba in Galing, p. 499 http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/two39.htm
The Worm Ouroboros (1922)

Men , War , World , Thinking

“As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion will break through an unreflecting mind.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), Dhammapada, Ch. 1: The Twin Verses, verse 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=v8oKAAAAYAAJ&q=%22As+rain+breaks+through+an+ill-thatched+house+passion+will+break+through+an+unreflecting+mind%22&pg=PA6#v=onepage

Passion , Housing

“I've missed you too! A lot of people have been wondering where I have been, and it's not very exciting news, and it's not very good news, it's just that I've been very ill. I've been very sick for a while and still trying to get better, slowly but surely…. Anyway, I was so overwhelmed —
Overwhelmed,
by all the
nice things you
folks said to me!
It was so nice to read everything that everyone was saying, and very, very sweet. I appreciate all the — oh, it made me cry, and — and it was just so nice, and I wanted to say a big 'Thank you!' to everyone for being so supportive and so nice to me…. I will be back in full swing, as much as I can, when I can, and in the mean time, I miss you all very, very much.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Quick Update from Ysabella Brave" (6 May, 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCVdO__jDgw

People , Support , Time , Reading

“This ruling has finally nailed down the coffin of what was from the beginning an ill-penned accord. This should make all those who authored and had a hand in writing the accord to get red in the face and immediately turn in their resignation from the government for trying to bungle our Constitution.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Official Website of the Senate of the Philippines http://www.senate.gov.ph/press_release/2008/1014_escudero1.asp
2008, Statement: on the MOA-AD Supreme Court Decision

“Mourne not inevitable things; thy teares can spring no deeds
To helpe thee, nor recall thy sonne: impacience ever breeds
Ill upon ill, makes worst things worse.”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Book XXIV, line 494, p. 336
The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets (1611)

Spring , Tear , Help

“If displeased with any man, do all you can to prevent his seeing it, for otherwise he will become estranged. And occasions often arise when he might and would have served you had you not lost him by showing your dislike. Of this I have had experience to my own profit. For once and again I have felt ill-disposed towards some one who not being aware of my hostility has afterwards helped me when I needed help and proved my good friend.”

Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) Italian writer, historian and politician

Number 324.
Counsels and Reflections (1857)

Hostility , Help

“Dream tonight of peacock tails, / Diamond fields and spouter whales. / Ills are many, blessings few, / But dreams tonight will shelter you.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Nine, Part II

Dreams

“If I were to be asked what two of the root principles are which we should always keep in view in trying to decide on a political issue, in judging of legislation, in judging of political action, I think I should say common sense and the preservation of what always has been the most precious thing in this country—individual freedom. If you apply these tests, you will seldom go far wrong. There are many people to-day who think you can cure the ills of the world by legislation: but you must examine the legislation they propose to see whether it is adapted to the practical experience of daily life, whether the freedom of the individual is affected by it. And if you cannot be satisfied on those points, you may be quite sure that that legislation in the long run will do more harm than it will do good.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the thirtieth anniversary of the Junior Imperial League in Kingsway Hall (19 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 18-19.
1926

Life , People , World , Thinking

“That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If for instance, +1, -1, √-1 had been called direct, inverse, and lateral units, instead of positive, negative, and imaginary (or even impossible) such an obscurity would have been out of question.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

In Theoria residiorum biquadraticorum, Commentatio secunda; Werke, Bd. 2 (Goettingen, 1863), p.177. As quoted by Robert Edouard Moritz in Memorabilia mathematica: the philomath's quotation book (1914) p. 282.

Question

“If you consider that the constant tenor of the gospel precepts is to promote love, peace, and good-will amongst men, you will not doubt that the cultivation of an amiable disposition is a great part of your religious duty; since nothing leads more directly to the breach of charity, and to the injury and molestation of our fellow-creatures than the indulgence of an ill- temper.”

Hester Chapone (1727–1801) British writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 363.

Love , Men , Peace , Parting

“Translation:Our house is burning and we look elsewhere. Nature mutilated, overexploited is not able to recover and we refuse to admit it. From North to South, it suffers from ill-development, and we are indifferent. Earth and humanity are in great peril and we are accountable.”

Jacques Chirac book Our house is on fire and we look away

Notre maison brûle et nous regardons ailleurs. La nature, mutilée, surexploitée, ne parvient plus à se reconstituer et nous refusons de l'admettre. L'humanité souffre. Elle souffre de mal-développement, au nord comme au sud, et nous sommes indifférents. La terre et l'humanité sont en péril et nous en sommes tous responsables.
Statement at the earth summit in Johannesburg Elysee.fr http://www.elysee.fr/elysee/francais/interventions/discours_et_declarations/2002/septembre/discours_de_m_jacques_chirac_president_de_la_republique_devant_l_assemblee_pleniere_du_sommet_mondial_du_developpement_durable.1217.html dated sept 2nd 2002

Nature , Suffering , Housing , Indifference

“Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (the whole peninsula of Indochina) present a puzzling picture, enigmatic to most foreigners and especially so to Americans. The very name Vietnam evokes deep emotions and bitter memories in our countrymen. But the tendency to blame Vietnam for our domestic ills has no foundation in fact. The problems of urban decay, racial disharmony, drug abuse, and all the rest were bound to plague us, whether or not we became involved in Vietnam. Indeed, one can argue that in the 1950s, well before we became heavily involved in Vietnam, a sense of national direction and purpose appeared to be lacking in the United States. This book looks at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a senior military professional who held important positions of responsibility during the conflict. Among other things, I will seek to bring out the lessons we have learned or should have learned from the war, and their implications for the future. The severe impact of the war on our armed forces and its almost disastrous effect on the U. S. Army will receive special treatment.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. vii-viii

War , Books , Problem , Sense

“He showed no fear. It seemed that, at the commencement, his race had known gods and no other. Gods had bound and ill treated and slaughtered and played with them. Gods were a fact, as were the sun and the shaking of the earth. Just another terrible reality.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book Two, Part III “The Island”, Chapter 3 (p. 219)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

God , Fear , Reality , Sun

“MacKinnon is a totalitarian. She wants a risk-free, state controlled world. She believes rules and regulations will solve every human ill and straighten out all those irksome problems between the sexes that have been going on for five thousand years. As a lawyer, MacKinnon is deft and pragmatic. But as a political thinker, cultural historian or commentator on sex, she is incompetent. For a woman of her obvious intelligence, her frame of reference is shockingly small.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 108

World , Sex , Intelligence , Problem

“You ask a thing ill-suited to my years, to yours both offensive and disgusting. For how can it become me, who am near forty, to write of love, or you, that are in your fifties, to read of it That is a subject which delights young minds, and demands a tender heart. Old men are as fitted to tales of love as young men are to tales of prudence. Nor is there anything uglier than old age pursuing love, but lacking strength. Certainly you will sometimes find old men in love,—loved again, never; matrons and girls alike despise old age. No man’s love will hold a woman, but his whom she has seen in the flower of his youth. And if you hear aught to the contrary, there’s a lie behind it. Indeed I know, to write of love does not beseem me, who have already passed the noonday of life and am carried on towards evening; but it dishonours you who ask no less than me who write.”

Pope Pius II book The Tale of Two Lovers

Source: The Tale of Two Lovers, 1444, p. xvii, preface (in 1933 edition)

Love , Life , Men , Lie

“In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood,--the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. II, Ch. 13 Discovery of Lake Huron
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Birth

“People, especially liberals and psychiatrists, say that the two main causes of crime are mental illness and poverty. Insanity is therefore a defense in the criminal law. If we really believed that poverty caused crime, we would have a "poverty defense" as well, attorneys calling professors of economics to testify in court whether a particular defendant is guilty of theft or not by reason of poverty.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary (1990)

People , Law

“Frequently I am asked if I will take my life when I have a terminal illness. My answer is: "I'll wait and see." If my dying is bearable, the pain well managed, and my self-control and dignity are not damaged, then I shall hang on and die naturally. But if I am one of the unlucky few who suffer abysmally, then I shall make a quick exit. This book is intended for readers who think much the same as me.”

Derek Humphry book Final Exit

"Introduction", p. XX
Final Exit

Life , Pain , Books , Nature

“The possibility of change depends on whether there is a sufficient number of enlightened witnesses to create a safety net for the growing consciousness of those who have been mistreated as children, so that they do not fall into the darkness of forgetfulness, from which they will later emerge as criminals or the mentally ill.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

Children , Change , Dependency , Forgetting

“But when ill indeed,
E'en dismissing the doctor don't always succeed.”

George Colman the Younger (1762–1836) English dramatist and writer

Lodgings for Single Gentlemen, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“The fact that human intuition is ill suited to situations involving uncertainty was known as early as the 1930's, when researchers noted that people could neither make up a sequence of numbers that passed mathematical tests for randomness nor recognize reliably whether a given string was randomly generated.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Prologue, p. ix
The Drunkard's Walk

People , Mathematics

“A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.”

William Shenstone (1714–1763) English gardener

Essays on Men and Manners (1804)

“The Wild Hunt is known in all Celtic countries; it is a huntsman with a pack of hounds who is seen or heard to rush through the country. Those who see him are doomed to die. The writer heard the Wild Hunt quite distinctly one night in Wales several years ago, but has not suffered any ill effects from it as yet.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Ghost Stories (1942).

Suffering , Night , Country

“To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews, and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 126
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“Dissentions existing between man and wife are in all events very unfortunate: when they become the subject of consideration to third persons, they are very unpleasant, and if the case requires that the conduct of each party should be commented upon in public, it is a most painful task to those to whose lot it falls to judge on them. The subject therefore is always to be handled with as much delicacy as it will admit of; but the infirmities of human nature have given rise to cruelties and other ill-treatment on the part of husbands, and to cases in which this Court has thought it indispensably necessary to interpose.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

Fletcher v. Fletcher (1788), 2 Cox. Eq. Cas. 102.

Pain , Nature , Parting , Personality

“No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Rice University speech

History , Star , Problem , Light

“The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children. Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber, who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies.
The fact that the lower animals are excited by the same emotions as ourselves is so well established, that it will not be necessary to weary the reader by many details. Terror acts in the same manner on them as on us, causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. Suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals. Courage and timidity are extremely variable qualities in the individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs. Some dogs and horses are ill-tempered and easily turn sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities are certainly inherited.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", pages 39-40 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=52&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Pain , Children , Pleasure , Fear