gossip is just the small change of conversation.

cruelty is the only thing that strikes me as completely unforgivable. The unpardonable sin.

You can't remain inactive in the face of injustice without, to some extent, being guilty of it.

People who praise illness as bringing out the best in people ought to have their heads examined. Pain forces you to think about yourself, directs your interest to your own body and what is happening to it. You don't reach out benevolently, filled with good will for others. You don't seem to care enough. Pain makes you a little person, not a big one, and not a nice one, except perhaps in the case of saints, and I've never known one.

The doctor will persist in laboring under the delusion that patients want common sense instead of magic.

People don't really change. Not fundamentally. When they surprise us, it is because we failed to recognize their potentialities.

There's no disillusionment like learning that forbidden fruit can be unpleasant.