Let the young know they will never find a more interesting, more instructive book than the patient himself.
—Giorgio Baglivi, c. 1696Quotes
Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.
—William Saroyan, 1943How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1857The doctor occupies a seat in the front row of the stalls of the human drama, and is constantly watching and even intervening in the tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies which form the raw material of the literary art.
—W. Russell Brain, 1952I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.
—Thomas Paine, 1803The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983Physician, heal yourself: thus you help your patient too. Let his best help be to see with his own eyes the man who makes himself well.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, c. 1884The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.
—Francis Bacon, 1605Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1734A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.
—Eric Hodgins, 1964You can’t find the soul with a scalpel.
—Gustave Flaubert, c. 1880I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BC