Illness Quotes

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ”
― Goldie Hawn

“Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“A best friend is the only one that walks into your life when the world has walked out.”
― Shannon l. Alder

“Sensitive people usually love deeply and hate deeply. They don't know any other way to live than by extremes because thier emotional theromastat is broken.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls. Not unlike a tour of Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside). At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you're living with this illness and functioning at all, it's something to be proud of, not ashamed of.
They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medication.”
― Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking

“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”
― Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals

“A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.”
― Joseph Conrad

“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
― Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

“I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: It was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won. Illness is a story told in the past tense.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Feelings are something you have; not something you are.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Worry is itself an illness, since worry is an accusation against Divine Wisdom, a criticism of Divine Mercy.”
― Said Nursi

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

“Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we're been longing for than to be stifled by our longing.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

“The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger.”
― Fidel Castro

“I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“Saving You

The darkness takes him over,
the sickness pulls him in;
his eyes—a blown out candle,
I wish to go with him.

Sometimes I see a flicker—
a light that shone from them;
I hold him to me tightly,
before he's gone again.”
― Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure

“Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient - Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“I am not afraid to die; I am only afraid of saying goodbye to you forever.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“When illness and old age are no longer indulgent and strength is irrevocably seeping away, brightness fades insidiously away from the light of the day and time only betrays reckless evanescence. (“Into a new life”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We may like to combat disease or even want to cure death. We may try to surf on the waves of infinity and attempt to kill mortality. Nobody, though, ever recovers from the lethal illness. In the meantime, we’d better unlock temporal moments that deliver touches of eternity. They, for sure, never disappoint. (" Living on probation")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it.”
― Siri Hustvedt, The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

“THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE

Before you examine the body of a patient,
Be patient to learn his story.
For once you learn his story,
You will also come to know
His body.
Before you diagnose any sickness,
Make sure there is no sickness in the mind or heart.
For the emotions in a man’s moon or sun,
Can point to the sickness in
Any one of his other parts.
Before you treat a man with a condition,
Know that not all cures can heal all people.
For the chemistry that works on one patient,
May not work for the next,
Because even medicine has its own
Conditions.
Before asserting a prognosis on any patient,
Always be objective and never subjective.
For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life,
But then later discovering that he will lose,
Will harm him more than by telling him
That he may lose,
But then he wins.


THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE by Suzy Kassem”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem