#illness

When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you. ↗

— Marya Hornbacher

#madness #manic-depression #mental-illness #reality #life

But he could not call the doctors at the leprosarium. They would return him to Louisiana. They would treat him and train him and counsel him. They would put him back into life as if his illness were all that mattered, as if wisdom were only skin deep, as if grief and remorse and horror were nothing but illusions, tricks done with mirrors, irrelevant to chrome and porcelain and clean, white, stiff hospital sheets and fluorescent lights. ↗

— Stephen R. Donaldson

#illness #sickness #life

Were she better, or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves. ↗

— John Green

#illness #sickness #starcrossed #stars #nature

His relationship with illness was flirtatious; only a particularly attractive ailment could tempt him into bed. ↗

— Sam Byers

#illness #relationship

In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable. ↗

— Kevin Alan Lee

#government #health-care #health-care-system #humanism #medical

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#mental-illness #poor #poverty #rich #society

To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#society #world #society

Doctors are great--as long as you don't need them. ↗

— Edward E. Rosenbaum

#illness #medicine #medicine

While we are looking for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, that is, the 'new', which can only be found by plunging deep into the Unknown, we have to go on exploring sex, books, and travel, although we know that they lead us to the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place where the antidote can be found. ↗

— Roberto Bolaño

#bolano #books #literature-and-illness #sex #travel

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words 'Be still'. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that? ↗

— Ramana Maharshi

#meditation #self #stillness #self-realization