#ill

The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#better #doctors #fact #get #great

As a species, taking all in all, we are still too young, too juvenile, to be trusted. We have spread across the face of the earth in just a few thousand years, no time at all as evolution clocks time, covering all livable parts of the planet, endangering other forms of life, and now threatening ourselves. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#clocks #covering #earth #endangering #evolution

Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the earliest records of every culture on earth. It is hard to think of a more dependable or enduring occupation, harder still to imagine any future events leading to its extinction. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#any #been #busy #costume #culture

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#cell #fact #family #genes #grasses

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#around #beast #begin #bits #calculating

My father was a doctor, and I admired him and got along well with him. He took me with him on house calls. We were living in Flushing, which was then a sleepy village of 25,000 - before the subway got there. I've been sure I wanted to be a doctor since I was about 12. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#admired #along #been #before #calls

We are not like the social insects. They have only the one way of doing things and they will do it forever, coded for that way. We are coded differently, not just for binary choices, go or no-go. We can go four ways at once, depending on how the air feels: go, no-go, but also maybe, plus what the hell let's give it a try. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#also #binary #choices #coded #depending

These girls come; they last one season; they're completely used up and dried out and sent back home. That's not how to make a life. I want a girl to come in knowing full well what she's getting into and being able to deal and make decisions that will create a career. ↗

— Carol Alt

#back #being #career #come #completely

The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole point of work, of life, of love.' ↗

— Paul Theroux

#changed #child #ever #filled #first

When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen. ↗

— Paul Theroux

#case #developing #direction #few #going