36 Illness Quotes To Inspire

Illness can be a challenging and transformative experience, often bringing forth a wave of emotions that range from despair to resilience. In times of struggle, finding solace and strength in words can provide a much-needed sense of comfort and motivation. That's why we've curated a collection of the top 36 illness quotes to inspire and uplift. Whether you're battling an illness yourself or supporting a loved one through their journey, these quotes serve as a reminder of the human spirit's incredible capacity to endure and thrive. Let these powerful words be a beacon of hope and a source of inner peace as you navigate through your personal challenges.

1. “I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.” - Henri Matisse

2. “no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine -- not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their lives on that business. But above all that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful [...] Their usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible because they were given in small doses) but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and those who loved her -- and that is why there are, and always will be, pseudo-healers, wise women, homoeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are suffering.” - Leo Tolstoy

3. “This is a diseased world in which it is impossible for anyone to be fully human. One way or another, everyone who lives in the modern world is sick or maladjusted.” - David Dellinger

4. “A weak but steady throb lay beneath Kev's searching fingertips. Win's heartbeat...the pulse that sustained his universe.” - Lisa Kleypas

5. “Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it.” - Siri Hustvedt

6. “Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.” - Kay Redfield Jamison

7. “08/14/1025h. Dessert Competitions.08/14/1315h. Illinois State Fair Infirmary; then motel; then Springfield Memorial Medical Center Emergency Room for distention and possible rupture of transverse colon (false alarm); then motel; incapacitated till well after sunset; whole day a washout; incredibly embarrassing, unprofessional; indescribable. Delete entire day.” - David Foster Wallace

8. “Without knowing the cause of illness, any treatment must be considered a guess.” - Richard Diaz

9. “God is not here to be demanded of, begged from, or criticized. He hands out burdens to those who are strong enough to carry them, and I feel profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of lining up with the other invalids and asking for mine to be alleviated.” - Ann Napolitano

10. “A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.” - Criss Jami

11. “It's normal to shy away from illness and death. It's natural to gravitate toward laughter and life.” - Ellyn Bache

12. “Doctors are great--as long as you don't need them.” - Edward E. Rosenbaum

13. “The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple.” - Victor Hugo

14. “Two weeks until your cure" she says finally. "Sixteen days" I say, but in my head I'm counting: Seven days. Seven days until I'm free and away from all these people and their sliding superficial lives brushing past one another gliding, gliding, gliding from life to death. For them there's hardly a change between the two.” - Lauren Oliver

15. “A best friend is the only one that walks into your life when the world has walked out.” - Shannon L. Alder

16. “Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.” - John Green

17. “I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

18. “Sensitive people usually love deeply and hate deeply. They don't know any other way to live than by extremes because thier emotional theromastat is broken.” - Shannon L. Alder

19. “Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.” - Jeannette Walls

20. “Love is an illness which doesn't have good nor recompense.” - Ali Bin Abi Thalib

21. “Here libido and ego-interest share the same fate and have once more become indistinguishable from each other. The familiar egoism of the sick person covers them both. We find it so natural because we are certain that in the same situation we should behave in just the same way. The way in which the readiness to love, however great, is banished by bodily ailments, and suddenly replaced by complete indifference, is a theme which has been sufficiently exploited by comic writers.” - Sigmund Freud

22. “Payton “Sin” Sinclair was an unapologetic people-watcher. As a sports consultant, working with some of the biggest and most recognizable athletes in sports and business, he had to be able to read the smallest nuances of others. That ability was just one of the unique attributes that set him apart from the competition and made him the go-to person when corporations wanted to align themselves with the top professional athletes in the country.” - Francis Ray

23. “At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.” - Benjamin J. Carey

24. “We're famous" iggy whispered so low that Fang could barely hear him."So's Swine Flu" Fang whispered back.” - James Patterson

25. “You cannot “catch” anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought. You are also inviting illness if you are listening to people talking about their illness. As you listen, you are giving all your thought and focus to illness, and when you give all of your thought to something, you are asking for it.” - Rhonda Byrne

26. “Embrace each challenge in your life as an opportunity for self-transformation.” - Bernie Siegel

27. “Suffering should not define you as a woman! And just because you’re a man it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect you! HELP HER to remove the taboos and the loneliness surrounding this disease; be understanding, show empathy, and don’t accuse her of being sensitive, delicate, or overly dramatic – this is a big opportunity for you guys to show that you care and to be a real man!"(Address, 2011 Endometriosis Foundation of America Blossom Ball)” - Susan Sarandon

28. “It never occurred to me that somehow women did know about it. It just never occurred to me. Yes I am wearing sneakers too. You are in a suit, I am comfortable. So when she explained to me that this was the first event really of its kind, it floored me. So I called my daughter who is in her 30s now and I said “do you know what endometriosis is?” She said, “what? Have to pack the pack the busters.”I said “no man, you have never heard of it?” No she said. I do not know what it is, and it occurred to me that my 30-year-old daughter who I told about endometriosis and it didn’t stick. If she didn’t know, and she is one of the hippest people I know, and her daughter doesn’t know, she has 19-year-old and she is a 13-year-old. The boy, we don’t care much about if he knows about it so much. There is other stuff for him to learn. Like how to roll a condom, things like that.You know, and it occurred to me that if they didn’t know that there were hundreds of thousands girls out there that don’t know. It is not because their mothers don’t want to tell them, because it’s not religion, it’s pure ignorance. We don’t know, we don’t have the information, we have it now, and so now is why this very first gathering is happening. Now is why we’re all sitting here looking really fabulous as you are...[Whoopi Goldberg on endometriosis awareness from the 2009 Blossom Ball]” - Whoopi Goldberg

29. “Each of us carries a sleeping tiger inside, and we can’t predict when that cat will wake, stretch, and sharpen its claws.” - Holly Robinson

30. “Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go," I said."1. Doesn't pun on your disability," Isaac said."2. Gets blood on the first try," I said."Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No condescending voice.""How are you doing, sweetie?" I asked, cloying. "I'm going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie.""Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?" he answered. "Most of them are good, actually. I just want to get the hell out of this place.” - John Green

31. “Even if these researchers do see the need to address the problem immediately, though they have obligations and legitimate interests elsewhere, including being funded for other research. With luck, the ideas discussed in Good Calories, Bad Calories may be rigorously tested in the next twenty years. If confirmed, it will be another decade or so after that, at least, before our public health authorities actively change their official explanation for why we get fat, how that leads to illness, and what we have to do to avoid or reverse those fates. As I was told by a professor of nutrition at New York University after on of my lectures, the kind of change I'm advocating could take a lifetime to be accepted.” - Gary Taubes

32. “I will admit it sometimes felt strange to me to make the confession to someone and later catch them laughing, or flirting, or eating a sandwich, instead of tearing at the injustice of it all or sitting quietly at the center of a grand and monstrous grief. The disaster of my life might be only the worst thing another person heard that afternoon; they might have forgotten by dinnertime; they might have been more heartbroken by watching certain movies.” - Jennifer Dubois

33. “People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most.” - Shannon L. Alder

34. “Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting.” - Chris Cleave

35. “Mentoring is: Sharing Life's Experiences and God's Faithfulness” - Janet Thompson

36. “People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead.” - Marian Keyes