No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

I am dying with the help of too many physicians.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

The 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.

You can’t find the soul with a scalpel.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.

We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.

Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.

Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.