In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws—hygiene of the body and hygiene of the spirit—is the surest warrant for health and happiness.

It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.

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

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

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.

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.

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.

I 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.

All pain is one malady with many names.

Physician, 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.