Quotes by Physicians

Lovely sight, the Apocalypse! But absurdity, without limits? No Sir! there have to be certain limits...
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Lebedev: ...There'll be a scandal, the tongues of the whole district will buzz with gossip, but it's better to go through a scandal, isn't it, than to destroy yourself for your whole life.
Anton Chekhov
Many patients with cancer are depressed, yet depression is not the cause of cancer.
David S. Bell
Regarding his friend's insight after losing her spouse to cancer: "She told me she had plenty of people to do things with but nobody to do nothing with.
Peter Bach
There is general agreement that red meat consumption increases the risk of colon or colorectal cancer. This was the only food association with cancer that was labeled ‘‘convincing’’ in the recent report from the World Cancer Research Fund, American Institute for Cancer Research (42). The evidence, of course, largely came from studies of meat consumption in nonvegetarians, although data from Adventist vegetarians in California concur (43).
Gary E. Fraser
Humility is one of the best expressions of self respect.
Debasish Mridha
Of course the people in the metro didn't see a thing!...what a joke! petrified ratlets! but they'll still come out to refute me! make claims!...that nothing got bombed!...squished! powdered! that the firmament was calm, and me, I imagined the whole thing! chrysanthemums, sprays, roses! why, there's no more any such thing as sky-hooking shrapnel than there is anal ice cream! it's all in my mind! hallucinations and bullshit! what a crook! but I repeat and reassert! shrapnel and fiery lace stretched from one end of the horizon to the other! with lots of glow-worms mixed in...and dancing purple fireflies...
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.
Anton Chekhov
In my opinion it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as God, pessimism, etc; his job is merely to record who, under what conditions, said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist is not meant to be a judge of his characters and what they say; his only job is to be an impartial witness. I heard two Russians in a muddled conversation about pessimism, a conversation that solved nothing; all I am bound to do is reproduce that conversation exactly as I heard it. Drawing conclusions is up to the jury, that is, the readers. My only job is to be talented, that is, to know how to distinguish important testimony from unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their language.
Anton Chekhov
Integrity and blame can never be friends.
Charles F. Glassman
I reckon that blaming people fixes nothing. You're the only person who is going to sort you out. No-one else really can - or really cares, enough. That's what Nepalis know - better than anyone. That's our Western disease. Don't take responsibility. Take on a lawyer!
Jane Wilson-Howarth
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Every inch of space was used. As the road narrowed, signs receded upwards and changed to the vertical. Businesses simply soared from ground level and hung out vaster, more fascinatingly illuminated shingles than competitors. We were still in a traffic tangle, but now the road curved. Shops crowded the pavements and became homelier. Vegetables, spices, grocery produce in boxes or hanging from shop lintels, meats adangle - as always, my ultimate ghastliness - and here and there among the crowds the alarming spectacle of an armed Sikh, shotgun aslant, casually sitting at a bank entrance. And markets everywhere. To the right, cramped streets sloped down to the harbor. To the left, as we meandered along the tramlines through sudden dense markets of hawkers' barrows, the streets turned abruptly into flights of steps careering upwards into a bluish mist of domestic smoke, clouds of washing on poles, and climbing. Hong Kong had the knack of building where others wouldn't dare.
Jonathan Gash
Footnotes the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.
William James
My own experience is that once a story has been written one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If in the first chapter you say there is a gun hanging on the wall you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.
Anton Chekhov
When the style is fully formed if it has a sweet undersong we call it beautiful and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Caesar had perished from the world of men Had not his sword been rescued by his pen.
Henry Vaughan
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow but only saps today of its strength.
A.J. Cronin
Half the world does not know how the other half lives.
François Rabelais
For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes by virtue of their common womanhood the property of all women.
Elizabeth Blackwell
There can be no substitute for work neither affection nor physical well-being can replace it.
Maria Montessori
Work ... has always been my favorite form of recreation.
Anna Howard Shaw
Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry.
Oliver Goldsmith
Employment is nature's physician and is essential to human happiness.
Galen
When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are the signs of our ideas only and not for things themselves.
John Locke
Man has his will - but woman has her way.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Women always have some mental reservation.
Louis Ferdinand Destouches
Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A modest woman dressed out in all her finery is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
Oliver Goldsmith
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
I never sleep in comfort save when I am hearing a sermon or praying to God.
François Rabelais
I'll fares the land to hastening ills a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay Princes and Lords may flourish or may fade - A breath can make them as a breath has made - But a bold peasantry their country's pride When once destroy'd can never be supplied.
Oliver Goldsmith
All wealth is the product of labor
John Locke
I'll fares the land to hastening ills of prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
Oliver Goldsmith
Take up our quarrel with the foe! To you from failing hands we throw The torch be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep though poppies grow In Flanders' fields.
John McCrae
When after many battles past Both tir'd with blows make peace at last What is it after all the people get? Why! taxes widows wooden legs and debt.
Francis Moore
So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community and until an equivalent discipline is organized I believe that war must have its way.
William James
War is much too important a matter to be left to the generals.
Georges Clémenceau
War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.
Georges Clémenceau
So long as the anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function no moral equivalent of war analogous as one might say to the mechanical equivalent of hate so long they fail to realize the full equities of the situation.
William James
Man wants but little here below Nor wants that little long.
Oliver Goldsmith
The vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within ourselves.
Thomas Browne
Don't be consistent but be simply true.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Rough work iconoclasm but the only way to get at the truth.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Take your needle my child and work at your pattern it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like embroidery.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The little things are infinitely the most important.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Life is a great bundle of little things.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The thoughts that come often unsought and as it were drop into the mind are commonly the most valuable of any we have.
John Locke
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts wisdom lies in their simplification.
Martin H. Fisher
An Englishman thinks seated a Frenchman standing an American pacing an Irishman afterward.
Austin O'Malley
Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions. It is time to acknowledge this perhaps even to learn to do it better.
Lewis Thomas
Thought is the strongest thing we have. Work done by true and profound thought - that is a real force.
Albert Schweitzer
I have always been waiting for something better-sometimes to see the best I had snatched from me.
Dorothy Reed Mendenhall
We have inherited new difficulties because we have inherited more privileges.
Dr. Abram Sacher
Respect the past in the full measure of its deserts but do not make the mistake of confusing it with the present nor seek in it the ideals of the future.
Jose Ingenieros
When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow I look back.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Posterity will say as usual: "In the past things were better the present is worse than the past."
Anton Chekhov
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
Oliver Wendell Holmes