Elisabeth Tova Bailey Quotes & Sayings

The sentence that best expresses a snail's way of life: 'The right thing to do is to do nothing, the place to do it is in a place of concealment and the time to do it is as often as possible. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Illness isolates; the isolated become invisible; the invisible become forgotten. But the snail ... the snail kept my spirit from evaporating. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties ... Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at all. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

It seemed far more reasonable to belong to a species that had evolved natural tooth replacement than to belong to one that had developed the dental profession. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

What majesty is in a creeping Snail, what reflection, what earnestness, what timidity and yet at the same time what firm confidence! — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

The life of a snail is as full of tasty food, comfortable beds of sorts, and a mix of pleasant and not-so-pleasant adventures as that of anyone I know — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Those of us with illnesses are the holders of the silent fears of those with good health. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

In terms of size, mammals are an anomaly, as the vast majority of the world's existing species are snail-sized or smaller. It's almost as if, regardless of your kingdom, the smaller your size & the earlier your place on the tree of life, the more critical is your niche on Earth: snails & worms create soil, & blue-green algae create oxygen; mammals seem comparatively dispensable, the result of the random path of evolution over a luxurious amount of time. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Survival often depends on a specific focus: A relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of a house. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

We are all hostages of time. We each have the same number of minutes and hours to live within a day, yet to me it didn't feel equally doled out. My illness brought me such an abundance of time that time was nearly all I had. My friends had so little time that I often wished I could give them what time I could not use. It was perplexing how in losing health I had gained something so coveted but to so little purpose. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey