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 only 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 (1977).
If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Over the Teacups (1891)
Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body."
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 The Way of All Flesh (1903)
If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose (1819)
Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady."
François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, No. 285.
What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
George Dennison Prentice, Prenticeana, 1860
It is part of the cure to wish to be cured."
Seneca, Hippolyus, CCXLIX.
I see rejection in my skin, worry in my cancers, bitterness and hate in my aching joints. I failed to take care of my mind, and so my body now goes to hospital."
Astrid Alauda
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
Attributed to Markus Herz by Ernst von Feuchtersleben, Zur Diätetik der Seele (1841)
Health is merely the slowest way someone can die."
Author Unknown
The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they'll ease
Your will they'll mend
And charge you not a shilling."
Anonymous nursery rhyme set to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", quoted in "The Health Club" in School Life
