Sayings about Sickness & Illness
Sickness accompanies a waning moon; a new moon cures disease. ~ Ugandan Proverbs
He that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well. ~ Hebrew Proverb
When a poor man eats a chicken, one or the other is sick. ~ Yiddish Proverbs
Time cures the sick man, not the ointment. ~ Traditional Proverb
People live with their own idiosyncrasies and die of their own illnesses. ~ Vietnamese Proverbs
Sickness comes in like a horse and leaves like a snail. ~ French Proverbs
The sickness of the body is the cure of the mind. ~ Basque Proverbs
Fear and restlessness kill more than do illnesses. ~ French Proverb
There is no cure for him who hides an illness. ~ Ethiopian Proverbs
When the head is sick the whole body is sick. ~ Dutch Proverbs
He who is sick will not refuse medicine. ~ Nigerian Proverbs
If the hyena eats the sick man, he will eat the whole one. ~ Swahili Proverbs
Sickness shows us what we are. ~ Latin Proverbs
There is an herb for every kind of sickness but not for death. ~ Lithuanian Proverbs
There is no cure for an unknown illness. ~ Myanmar Proverb
Sick people have no friends. ~ Creole Proverb (Southern U.S.)
If two doctors visit a sick man, the sexton rings the bells. ~ Spanish Proverbs
If you want to give a sick man medicine, let him first be really ill — so that he can see how well the medicine works. ~ Nigerian Proverb
You inherit from the dead, not from the sick. ~ Congolese Proverb
Better a sick body than an ignorant mind. ~ Greek Proverbs
Tobacco hic, Will make a man well if he be sick. ~ Traditional Proverb
Time, not medicine, cures the sick. ~ Portuguese Proverbs
Keep your sickness until Friday and don’t fast. ~ Portuguese Proverb
Sometimes the body becomes healthy by being very sick. ~ Iranian Proverbs
Youth is a kind of illness cured only by the passing years. ~ Arabian Proverbs
He wanted to cure a healthy pig and ended up with a sick one. ~ Vietnamese Proverbs
To a physician a sick man is a garden. ~ Swahili Proverb
Sickness soaks the purse. ~ Traditional Proverb
Sickness comes on horseback, but goes away on foot. ~ Traditional Proverb
One who recovers from sickness, forgets about God. ~ Ethiopian Proverb
Too much prudishness makes the lover sick. ~ Turkish Proverbs
If you are too smart to pay the doctor, you had better be too smart to get ill. ~ African Proverb
No man is a good physician who has never been sick. ~ Traditional Proverb
The superior doctor prevents sickness; the mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness; the inferior doctor treats actual sickness. ~ Traditional Proverb
When a liar speaks the truth, he is sick. ~ Romanian Proverbs
Every sickness begins in the stomach. ~ Yemeni Proverbs
Sick people are like kings. ~ Malagasy Proverb
Sickly women live longer. ~ Spanish Proverb
Man is the instrument of illness. ~ Japanese Proverbs
A sick person is a prisoner. ~ Yemeni Proverb
Sickness is felt, but health not at all. ~ Traditional Proverb
If love is a sickness, patience is the remedy. ~ Cameroonian Proverb
It’s better to drink and feel sick than not to drink and feel bad. ~ Montenegro Proverb
A healthy ear can stand hearing sick words. ~ Senegalese Proverb
If you are sick, think about your life; if you are better, think about your gold. ~ Mongolian Proverbs
One can get sick of cake, but never of bread. ~ Russian Proverb
If envy were a fever, all the world would be ill. ~ Danish Proverbs
Sickness comes with a waning moon; a new moon cures disease. ~ Basotho Proverb
You won’t get sick if you have plenty of work. ~ Japanese Proverb
Just as a medicine may not cure a serious illness, wine will certainly not dispel your grief. ~ Chinese Proverbs
When you are sick you promise a goat, but when you are well again make do with a chicken. ~ Nigerian Proverb
If you sit at a crossroads, you will get sick. ~ Palestinian Proverb
Happy is the man without sickness. Rich is the man with no debts. ~ Chinese Proverb
A man cannot be a good physician if he has never been sick himself. ~ Arabian Proverb
It’s better that it should make you sick than that you don’t eat it at all. ~ Catalan Proverb
Quotations about Sickness & Illness
Let your entrance into the sick room decrease, not increase, the irritability of your patient. ~ Martin H. Fischer
Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness. ~ Richard Carlson
I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. ~ Samuel Butler
In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality. And first she unties the strings of vanity that made her upper garments cleave to the world and sit uneasy. ~ Jeremy Taylor
For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill. ~ Marcel Proust
Many ordinary illnesses are nothing but the expression of a serious dissatisfaction with life. ~ Dr. Paul Tournier
You can die of the cure before you die of the illness. ~ Michael Landon
A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses. ~ Hippocrates
If you constantly think of illness, you eventually become ill; if you believe yourself to be beautiful, you become so. ~ Shakti Gawain
Most of the time we think we’re sick, it’s all in the mind. ~ Thomas Wolfe
An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one’s experience and removes it to a point so remote that it appears like a vision. ~ Sholem Asch
Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy! ~ Thomas Carlyle
Do not believe yourself healthy. Immortality is health; this life is a long sickness. ~ St. Augustine
Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness. ~ Edward Stanley
Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young. ~ Sigmund Freud
Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when. ~ Philip Roth
The secret of learning to be sick is this: Illness doesn’t make you less of what you were. You are still you. ~ Tony Snow
Few spirits are made better by the pain and languor of sickness; as few great pilgrims become eminent saints. ~ Thomas a Kempis
When you are called to a sick man, be sure you know what the matter is — if you do not know, nature can do a great deal better than you can guess. ~ Nicholas de Belleville
To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld
People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness. ~ John Wanamaker
Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. ~ Marcel Proust
Humor may be hazardous to your illness. ~ Ellie Katz
Sickness is a belief, to be annihilated by the divine Mind. ~ Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy
Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset. ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick. ~ Ben Jonson
If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To hate and to fear is the be psychologically ill… it is, in fact, the consuming illness of our time. ~ Harry A. Overstreet
Most illnesses do not, as is generally thought, come like a bolt out of the blue. The ground is prepared for years through faulty diet, intemperance, overwork, and moral conflicts, slowly eroding the subject’s vitality. ~ Dr. Paul Tournier
In sickness let me not so much say, am I getting better of my pain? as am I getting better for it? ~ William Shakespeare
To live by medicine is to live horribly. ~ Carolus Linnaeus
There are two kinds of people; those who are always well and those who are always sick. Most of the evils of the world come from the first sort and most of the achievement from the second. ~ Louis Dudek
To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness.~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
It is dainty to be sick, if you have leisure and convenience for it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge we make promise only; pain we obey. ~ Marcel Proust
I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worthwhile. ~ George Bernard Shaw
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer. ~ William James
To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives. ~ Charles Lamb
The most important thing when ill, is to never lose heart. ~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate. ~ Jessamyn West
Fear and restlessness kill more than do illnesses. ~ French Proverb
Art is a kind of illness. ~ Giacomo Puccini
It’s no longer a question of staying healthy. It’s a question of finding a sickness you like. ~ Jackie Mason
A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree. ~ Spike Milligan
A Man’s illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he love you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy. ~ Lauren Bacall
The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. ~ Oscar Wilde
When a man is ill nothing is so important to him as his own illness. ~ Anthony Trollope
To have a curable illness and to leave it untreated except for prayer is like sticking your hand in a fire and asking God to remove the flame. ~ Sandra L. Douglas
Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change. ~ Herodotus
Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state. ~ Alexander Pope
Serious illness doesn’t bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host. ~ Albert Schweitzer
If you look like your passport picture you’re too ill to travel. ~ Will Kommen
Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of. ~ John Green
The more serious the illness, the more important it is for you to fight back, mobilizing all your resources-spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical. ~ Norman Cousins
Suggested readings: Body Matters: A Phenomenology of Sickness, Disease, and Illness. ~ External link