Archive

Quotes

The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command.

—Alexander of Tralles, c. 600

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

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

—Sigmund Freud, 1912

He that serves God for money will serve the Devil for better wages.

—Roger L’Estrange, 1692

If they prescribe a lot of remedies for some sickness or other, it means that the sickness is incurable.

—Anton Chekhov, 1904

All of life is a foreign country.

—Jack Kerouac, 1949

The life of spies is to know, not be known.

—George Herbert, c. 1621

Civilization, a much-abused word, stands for a high matter quite apart from telephones and electric lights.

—Edith Hamilton, 1930

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

—André Gide, 1926

My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.

—Tecumseh, 1810

It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.

—Plautus, c. 193 BC

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.

—Thomas Traherne, c. 1670

What one man can invent another can discover.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905