Fyodor Dostoyevsky on health

The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.

Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007Preface (p. xi)

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

Mark Twain1835–1910“Following the Equator: Pudd’s ahead Wilson’s New Calendar”, as quoted in Medicine in Quotations: Views of Health and Disease Through the Ages (2006), p. 146

The mistakes made by doctors are innumerable. They err habitually on the side of optimism as to treatment, of pessimism as to the outcome.

Marcel Proust1871–1922