Illness Quotes - Page 10

• Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Mental Illness, Treats

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.109, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Words can make the illness a subject I can master, and not one that one simply emotes over.

  Tony Judt

  Masters, Subjects, Emote

  "Historian Tony Judt dies aged 62" by Jamie Doward, www.theguardian.com. August 7, 2010.

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• It's a different sort of love taht puts up with illness. Old love.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Different, Old Love

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• A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.

  Howard Hodgkin

  Artist, Thinking, Energy

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• The fact that illness is associated with the poor --who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one's midst --reinforces the association of illness with the foreign with an exotic, often primitive place.

  Susan Sontag

  Perspective, Exotic, Association

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• The theatre is my drug. And my illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality.

  John Wilmot

  Drug, Theatre, Quality

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• The Stoics say, "Retire within yourselves; it is there you will find your rest." And that is not true. Others say, "Go out of yourselves; seek happiness in amusement." And this is not true. Illness comes. Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

  Blaise Pascal

  Amusement, Retiring

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pensées”, p.130, Courier Corporation

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• We are all frail-embodied creatures, who at times suffer through injustice, abuse, illness, pain and misfortune.

  Bryant H. McGill

  Pain, Abuse, Suffering

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• I have seen great beauty of spirit in some who were great sufferers. I have seen men, for the most part, grow better not worse with advancing years, and I have seen the last illness produce treasures of fortitude and meekness from most unpromising subjects.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Years, Treasure

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.214, Simon and Schuster

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• A life like an intricately woven basket, frayed, worn, broken, unraveled, reworked, reknit from many of its original pieces... Life can survive in the constant shadow of illness, and even rise to moments of rampant joy, but the shadow remains, and one has to make space for it.

  Diane Ackerman

  Space, Broken, Joy

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• I will say in open adoption, all these choices you make about race, about the amount of mental illness you can deal with, about special needs and physical maladies, you have to lay all this out there before you know anybody's story.

  Jennifer Gilmore

  Race, Adoption, Choices

  "Fictional 'Mothers' Reveal Facts Of A Painful Adoption Process". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. May 22, 2013.

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• When I talk to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and other patient support groups, I take questions at the end. At one talk I was asked, "What's the difference between yourself and someone without mental illness?". At another talk I was asked, "How do you make the voices be not so mean?". I wish I knew.

  Mark Vonnegut

  Mean, Voice, Differences

  Mark Vonnegut, M.D. (2010). “Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir”, p.9, Delacorte Press

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• Embedded in this outlook is an idea of the body as a machine, so that illness is seen as a breakdown of the machine, healing involves repairing the broken parts, and a doctor is a kind of mechanic with medications as his or her tools.

  Russell Shorto

  Healing, Doctors, Ideas

  Russell Shorto (2008). “Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason”, p.13, Vintage

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• I divested myself of despair and fear when I came here. Now there is no more catching one's own eye in the mirror, there are no bad books, no plastic, no insurance premiums, and of cours eno illness. Contrition does not exist, nor gnashing of teeth. No one howls as the first clod of earth hits the casket. The poor we no longer have with us. Our calm hearts strike only the hour, and God, as promised, proves to be mercy clothed in light.

  Jane Kenyon

  Book, Heart, Eye

  Jane Kenyon, “Notes From The Other Side”

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• ...it seemed appropriate that I should develop some kind of illness. This is a good idea when you are at a loose end because everything, up to and including herpes, is better than being bored.

  Jeremy Clarkson

  Ideas, Bored, Kind

  Jeremy Clarkson (2004). “The world according to Clarkson”

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• I know of people who don't believe it, but depression is an illness, but unlike, say, a broken leg, you don't know when it'll get better.

  Marian Keyes

  Believe, People, Broken

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• I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character that has lived for 4,000 years, and I wanted to know what was its birth, what is its mind, its personality, its psyche?

  Siddhartha Mukherjee

  Cancer, Writing, Character

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• Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Spring, Men, Civilization

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2007). “Around the Red Lamp: Medical Life As It Used to Be”, p.47, Fireship Press

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• I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me.

  Charles Dickens

  Beautiful, Flower, Clouds

  Charles Dickens (1853). “Bleak House”, p.353

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• Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

  Lauren Groff

  Passion, India, Spain

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• If we can use our problems and illnesses as opportunities to think about how we can change our lives, we have power.

  Louise Hay

  Opportunity, Thinking, Use

  Louise L. Hay (1991). “The Power Is Within You”, p.18, Hay House, Inc

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• So intense was his sexual frustration that it had begun to feel like a life-threatening illness: testicular gout, libidinal gangrene.

  Ned Beauman

  Frustration, Gout, Threatening

  "The Teleportation Accident". Book by Ned Beauman, July 19, 2012.

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• The sweetness that all longed for night and day. Some tragedy might be idly guessed at-loss or illness. She had the luminosity of those about to die.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Loss, Night, Tragedy

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• That was the way illness appeared in a house, in the corners, in between floorboards, on the hooks in the closet, along with the sweaters and coats.

  Alice Hoffman

  Sweaters, House, Hook

  Alice Hoffman (2008). “The Third Angel”, p.13, Random House

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• No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Nerves, Red, Rooms

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.20, Penguin

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