Illness Quotes - Page 10

• ..Since depression is a genetic biological illness, like diabetes, or low thyroid, it wasn't lack of character, laziness, or something I could "snap out of"-it would be like trying to snap out of a toothache.

  Peter McWilliams

  Depression, Character, Trying

  Peter McWilliams (1997). “Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned about Life in School--but Didn't”, Mary Book / Prelude Press

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• One [of the two ideas for PROOF] was to write about two sisters who are quarreling over the legacy of something left behind by their father. The other was about someone who knew that her parent had had problems of mental illness [and that] she might be going through the same thing.

  David Auburn

  Father, Writing, Ideas

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• Why are entire flocks of industrial birds dying at once? And what about the people eating those birds? Just the other day, one of the local pediatricians was telling me he's seeing all kinds of illnesses that he never used to see. Not only juvenile diabetes, but inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that a lot of the docs don't even know what to call. And girls are going through puberty much earlier; and kids are allergic to just about everything, and asthma is out of control. Everyone knows it's our foods... Kids today are the first generation to grow up on this stuff.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Girl, Growing Up, Kids

  "Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, November 2, 2009.

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• The sick man must follow his illness to the place where it is treated... He is set aside in one of the technical and secret zones (hospitals, prisons, refuse dumps) which relieve the living of everything that might hinder the chain of production and consumption, and which repair and select what can be sent back up to the surface of progress.

  Michel de Certeau

  Men, Sick, Secret

  "Arts de Faire".

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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 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 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 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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• 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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• 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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• I know that if I could really understand mental illness, then it would be appropriate to make a big career shift. I would become a therapist and a leader in terms of mental illness. But I'm not in the position.

  John Forbes Nash

  Careers, Leader, Would Be

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• I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Emotional, Years, Bipolar

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• A naturopath once told me you should never take antibiotics except if you have pneumonia, a kidney infection or some other serious illness. That's my philosophy, too.

  Pamela Sue Martin

  Philosophy, Pneumonia, Serious Illness

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• AIDS today is not a death sentence. It can be treated as a chronic illness, or a chronic disease.

  Yusuf Hamied

  Disease, Today, Aids

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• Dementia is our most-feared illness, more than heart disease or cancer.

  David Perlmutter

  Cancer, Heart, Disease

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• People, unprotected by their roles, become isolated in beauty and intellect and illness and confusion.

  Richard Avedon

  People, Confusion, Roles

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• If I learnt anything at all about terminal illness in my research, it's that the experience is different for everyone. I do believe that life becomes concentrated when it's boundaried and that death is the biggest boundary of all.

  Jenny Downham

  Believe, Different, Research

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• Newborn screening is a public health intervention that involves a simple blood test used to identify many life-threatening genetic illnesses before any symptoms begin.

  Lucille Roybal-Allard

  Simple, Blood, Tests

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