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.

Hatred is one of the poisons; like jaundice, it alters the true colors of things.

gossip is just the small change of conversation.

a fair degree of literacy of speech ... is increasingly rare in politicians and not necessarily regarded as an asset.

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

Nothing is as depressing as absolute logic. Look at the maze of French politics perpetrated by a logical people.

The strength of weak people constantly appalls me. Have you ever seen a vine kill an oak tree? Deadly.