sickness Quotes

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”

She had never known it to be so silent before. She heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for any one. The noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive. Everyone was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but themselves. But if everyone had got well again, surely some one would remember and come to look for her.

When I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept saying to herself as fast as she could, ‘You can do it! You can do it!’ and I did. I had to try myself at the same time, of course, but her Magic helped me—and so did Dickon’s. Every morning and evening and as often in the daytime as I can remember I am going to say, ‘Magic is in me! Magic is making me well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as strong as Dickon!’ And you must all do it, too. That is my experiment Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff?”

One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.

When new beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him.

“I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.”

“While there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.”

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”

There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very pulsation is invisible. Such cancers leave the ivory whiteness of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh, with their blue tints; the physician who bends over the patient’s chest hears not, through he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding its onward progress through the muscles, as the blood flows freely on; the knife has never been able to destroy, and rarely even, temporarily, to discern the rage of these mortal scourges; their home is in the mind, which they corrupt; they fill the whole heart until it breaks. Such, madame, are the cancers, fatal to queens; are you, too, free from their scourge?

“You’re born and you keep getting older and grayer and sicker, and no matter what efforts you make to reverse the process, you die, every single time. To repeat: worse, worse, worse, and then death. I have a long way to go before the worst. This is only the beginning.”

“John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?”

“It was a long weary time, for the Boy was too ill to play, and the little Rabbit found it rather dull with nothing to do all day long. But he snuggled down patiently, and looked forward to the time when the Boy should be well again, and they would go out in the garden amongst the flowers and the butterflies and play splendid games in the raspberry thicket like they used to.”

″‘How about his old Bunny?’ she asked. ‘That?’ said the doctor. ‘Why, it’s a mass of scarlet fever germs!—Burn it at once. What? Nonsense! Get him a new one. He mustn’t have that any more!‘”

“And so the little Rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. That was a fine place to make a bonfire, only the gardener was too busy just then to attend to it. He had the potatoes to dig and the green peas to gather, but next morning he promised to come quite early and burn the whole lot.”

“Voodoo,” [Cootie] whispered. “Some peoples sayin Henrietta’s sickness and them cells was man- or woman-made, others say it was doctor-made.”

“It made me wonder, thought, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy. ... Certainly, I would not be part of this family.”

″[Ma] gets sick of things fast, it’s from being an adult.”

“‘Sailing,’ he liked to joke, ‘is the fine art of getting wet and becoming ill, while going nowhere slowly at great expense.’”

″...For Doctor Diver to marry a mental patient? How did it happen? Where did it begin?”

“She had a naked child with her, a little naked girl, barely able to toddle, and after a while she set this child on the ground and give her a push and whispered something to her. This child come toward me, barely able t’walk, come toddling up to me and—Jesus, it makes you sick t’remember a thing like this! It stuck out its hand and tried to unbutton my trousers!”

“My belly ached again, as if I were still at sea and the waves were throwing me off balance.”

“Good my lord, be cured Of this diseased opinion, and betimes; For ‘tis most dangerous.”

“Basically, I’m allergic to the world. Anything can trigger a bout of sickness.”

“From my vantage point, hidden behind the flowers, I’m level with the king’s box and slightly behind it. Mare Barrow, a few yards from the king. What would my family think, or Kilorn for that matter? This man sends us to die, and I’ve willingly become his servant. It makes me sick.”

“We don’t care about assigning blame for the human condition, we just want to cure it.”

“Gottman has found, in fact, that the presence of contempt in a marriage can even predict such things as how many colds a husband or wife gets; in other words, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system.”

“Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions”

“People who are afflicted by sickness or poverty or love or thirst or any other unsatisfied desires are prone to anger and easily roused.”

“They called it battle fatigue, and they said hallucinations were common with malarial fever.”

“You felt ill this afternoon,” he said, “because you’re getting better. When we’re healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You’re becoming healthy, that’s all. You’ll be healthier still this time tomorrow.”

“Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.”

“Death is before me today: Like the recovery of a sick man, Like going forth into a garden after sickness.”

“His one dream now was to fall sick for two or three weeks . . . not fatally . . . just sick enough to be put in the hospital.”

“Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is ‘If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?‘”

“There’s a dreamy guy, looking all pulled together and gorgeous and here’s me, being all cough-spastic, breath-wheeze-cough-cough death rattle. That is it. I’m going to choke to death in an elevator dressed like I’m on my way to a hooker’s funeral, and this blonde male model is going to watch me die.”

“He is cured by faith who is sick of fate.”

“I listened to their stories and found so many areas where we overlapped – not all the deeds, but the feelings of remorse and hopelessness. I learned that alcoholism isn’t a sin, it’s a disease.”

“I loved his brown eyes, the way he looked so worried, as if he’d never seen a kid throw up before.”

″ That night he had a stomachache!”

“Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea... ‘One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time.’ ”

“Camilla was striped from head to toe. She looked like a rainbow.”

“What we have here is a bad case of stripes. One of the worst I’ve ever seen!”

″ ‘Are we going to get shots?’ he asked. ‘That’s up to...to... to.... the doctor, ’ said Papa , sneezing even bigger sneeze than before.”

″ ‘Time for your medicine, Papa!’ said the cubs, offering him a big spoonful of the gooey pink stuff that Dr. Grizzly prescribed for his cold.”

″ ‘I don’t need checkups anymore,’ bragged Papa. ‘Because I...I... AH-CHOO! never get sick.’ ”

“You see, there are some kinds of medicine that you take after you get sick, and those are very useful. But this kind of shot is a special medicine that keeps you from getting sick.”

“Hooray! My good friends are here!”

“He had to stay in bed for the next two days, as green as a lizard and convinced that he would die if nausea and the pain in his head. His father thought he had a virus, and his mother immediately suspected her mother-in-law but didn’t dare accuse her of poisoning her only grandson.”

“John, how can you expect sick people to come and see you when you keep all these animals in the house? It’s a fine doctor would have his parlor full of hedgehogs and mice!”

“Mrs. Murphy was summoned and gazed with delight upon him: sick infants were her reason for being, she thought there was nothing nicer and more pleasingly dreadful.”

“One day in summer Frog was not feeling well. Toad said, ‘Frog, you are looking quite green.’ ‘But I always look green,’ said Frog. ‘I am a frog.’ ‘Today you look very green even for a frog,’ said Toad.”

“Toad was getting colder and colder. He was beginning to shiver and sneeze. ‘I will have to come out of the water,’ said Toad. ‘I am catching a cold.’ ”

″‘I love you,’ I whispered. I wanted her to say it back. I wanted her to put her painted arms round me and hug me tight. I wanted her to step out of her sickness and tell them I’d never so much as set eyes on my father. I wanted her to tell them that she couldn’t leave me all on my own.”

“The rhinoceros was ready with a handkerchief.”

“The penguin sat quietly, keeping Amos’s feet warm.”

“One day Amos awoke with the sniffles, and the sneezes, and the chills. He swung his achy legs out of bed, curled them back again and said, ‘Ugh. I don’t think I’ll be going to work today.’ ”

“Poor Simon Shaw. He’s gone downhill a lot, hasn’t he?”

“It’s easy to forget that Simon’s not going to live on like the rest of us. A few MD patients get mentally affected, but Simon’s so quick, and he’s got such a wicked sense of humor, that once you know him you hardly notice he’s in a wheelchair...”

″‘...is there anyone in the class who’s not worried about getting old?’ Simon’s hand went up. ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘Good, Simon.’ exclaimed Ms. Kidman in relief. ‘Why’s that?’ And suddenly I saw her try to stop herself, as she realized what was coming. ‘Well, I’m not going to get to old age, am I?’ replied Simon. ‘I’m going to be dead first.‘”

“Anyway, when he was in about Form One, some stupid fool started a rumor that Simon had AIDS, and that’s why he was sick. Next thing you know, some parents wouldn’t let their kids play with Simon, in case they caught something from him.”

“The Rodent, for that was the boat’s name, proved to be very well made and very well suited to the sea. And Amos, after one miserable day of seasickness, proved to be a natural sailor, very well suited to the ship.”

“Wherever and whenever Jesus Christ is proclaimed as our sacrifice for sin and sickness, physical healing as well as spiritual salvation will result.”

″... he felt much too sick even to notice the seagulls, let alone scare them away from the lunch.”

″‘I’m sick,’ said Rose. ‘I’m staying in bed.’ ‘All day?’ said John Brown. ‘All day and for ever,’ said Rose.”

″ ‘Aren’t you worried that maybe I will get sick and all my teeth fall out from eating so much bread and jam?’ asked Frances. ‘I don’t think that will happen for quite a while’, said Mother, ‘So eat it all up and enjoy it.’ ”

“I am aware of myself. And, of course, the only things that are aware of themselves and conscious of their individuality are irritated eyes, cut fingers, sore teeth. A healthy eye, finger, tooth might as well not even be there. Isn’t it clear that individual consciousness is just sickness?”

″‘Did you have an exciting afternoon?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Peter. ‘We had a flood, a stampede, a volcano, I got sleeping sickness, and-’ Peter was interrupted by the adults’ laughter.”

″ ‘Will you be good, Sir?’ she exclaimed, stamping her foot on the ground. ‘The reason for this, and the reason for that, indeed! You are always wanting the reason. No reason. There! Hoity toity me! I am sick of your grown-up reasons.’ ”

“It’s been rather like one of those awful plays where people keep rushing in with bad news. And on top of it all there were you, just about to kick the bucket...”

“I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony.”

“The smell of hospitals always makes me think of death. In fact I think hospitals are exactly what graveyards are supposed to be like. They ought to bury people in hospitals and let sick people get well in the cemeteries.”

“He was called Smith and was twelve years old. Which, in itself, was a marvel; for it seemed as if the smallpox, the consumption, the brain-fever, jail-fever and even the hangman’s rope had given him a wide berth for fear of catching something.”

“Sometimes I get terribly sick and have to be waited on Sometimes I get so sick my head falls over and is wobbling until it is loose”

“Ken, you know the world is full of unpleasant things. Pain and operations and sickness and discomfort. You mustn’t mind. That’s just the way life is. Besides all that, there is health and goodness and soundness and fun and happiness, too, for horses as well as boys- much more of the good things then the bad- ”

“The reason for the curl rags was that all the village children had been invited to a grand tea-party at the Squire’s the next day; and Amelia-anne was gloomy because it did not seem as if the five little Stigginses would be able to go.”

“And the five little Stigginses sat up in the big bed and howled horribly with disappointment.”

“I’m glad you saw, ‘cos I didn’t take a bit more’n what I could easy have ate; and the five of them’s got colds in their heads, and when I left them they were all howlin’ somethink awful, and I couldn’t bear to go home and tell them everything and them not have a bite as you might say.”

“She plucked off a berry. She started to gnaw it. It tasted just awful. Almost made her sick. But she wanted that tail, so she swallowed it quick. Then she felt something happen! She felt a small twitch as if she’d been tapped, down behind, by a switch. And Gertrude looked ‘round. And she cheered! It was true! Two feathers! Exactly like Lolla-Lee-Lou!”

“She confused being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it.”

“So you’re back with the vestibule fish for a spell.”

“He is only a wreck of himself, and he does not remember anything that has happened to him for a long time past.”

“Thus, a sickness,” continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption,—but standing up, and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure,—“a sickness, a sore place, if we may so call it, in your spirit, hath immediately its appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. Would you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil? How may this be, unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in your soul?”

“We know that!” answered Heathcliff; “but his life is not worth a farthing, and I won’t spend a farthing on him.”

“I am a poor student, sick and shattered by poverty.”

“but while there’s life there’s hope, so you must keep up your spirits.”