On Being Ill: with Notes from Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen

by Virginia Woolf

We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.

short of the best in literature we like the worst—it is mediocrity that is hateful—

AMONG THE NUMBER of small evils which haunt illness, the greatest, in the misery which it can cause, though the smallest in size, is crumbs.