Palliatives Quotes & Sayings

But what is there in man older and deeper than the religious sentiment?
There is man himself; that is, volition and conscience, free-will and law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war with himself: why?
"Man," say the theologians, "transgressed in the beginning; our race is guilty of an ancient offence. For this transgression humanity has fallen; error and ignorance have become its sustenance. Read history, you will find universal proof of this necessity for evil in the permanent misery of nations. Man suffers and always will suffer; his disease is hereditary and constitutional. Use palliatives, employ emollients; there is no remedy. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

We doctors have always been a simple trusting folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500 years and Hippocrates for more than 2000? — William Osler

He [Dr. Juvenal Urbino] arose at the crack of dawn, when he began to take his secret medicines: potassium bromide to raise his spirits, salicylates for the ache in his bones when it rained, ergosterol drops for vertigo, belladonna for sound sleep. He took something every hour, always in secret, because in his long life as a doctor and teacher he had always opposed prescribing palliatives for old age: it was easier for him to bear other people's pains than his own. In his pocket he always carried a little pad of camphor that he inhaled deeply when no one was watching to calm his fear of so many medicines mixed together. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Spring can be more painful than any other time of the year. Summer is lazy and indifferent. Autumn is demanding and invigorating. Winter is numb and self-contained, but Spring has none of the palliatives. Every emotional nerve is close to the surface. Every sound and sight, every touch of the air is a summons to feel, to open your doors, to let life possess you and do what it likes with you. — Lynne Reid Banks

Hope is nothing but a deceitful flatterer accepted by reason only because it is often in need of palliatives. — Giacomo Casanova

I hated to read. My mother could not get me to read. I'm going through the same thing with my daughter now. I love to read now, but I don't remember reading. — Dorothy Hamill

One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest - indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind. — Hilaire Belloc

The fascinating thing to a dispassionate observer about the structure of life in the Soviet Union is that in their efforts to produce an unknown that we may let its ideologists call Socialism the Communist dictators have produced a brutal approximation of monopoly Capitalism, a system that has all the disadvantages of our own, with none of the palliatives which come to us from surviving competition and from the essential division of economic and political power which has so far made it possible for the humane traditions of the Western world to continue. — John Dos Passos

Do not to your neighbor what you would take ill from him. — Pittacus Of Mytilene

Medications are palliatives. They are not designed to cure the degenerative diseases of the body. — Fereydoon Batmanghelidj

It struck me then, for the first time, how unethical anxiety is, how it voids the reality of other people by conscripting them as palliatives for your own fear. — Adam Haslett

With access to a medicine cabinet full of palliatives, we can avoid introspection. We can delay coming to terms with our inevitable disintegration and avoid investigating the root causes of the spiritual dysfunction that causes our resultant discomfiture. We can medicate ourselves out of thinking beyond placating our immediate needs; we can remain fixated upon expeditiously enhancing our personal pleasure ride. Instead of thinking, all we need is a new prescription drug. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I advocate giving full attention to the pain that arises with the breakdown of an addiction and the story that embeds it. (The "addiction" can be something subtle, a self-image, for example, or thoughts about how ethical or successful one is.) Just as it feels good to meet a need, an unmet need hurts. Pain is its call for attention. When all the substitutes for meeting that need are exhausted, when all the palliatives stop working, finally the pain that had been diffuse and latent leads us to the need. — Charles Eisenstein

What do we really want from religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances? Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish. You might think that grown-ups would be ashamed to put such thoughts into print. The fashionable way of doing this is not to blame the Universe
which seems truly pointless
but rather to blame the means by which we know the Universe, namely science. — Carl Sagan

Where there is a Key, there is yet hope. — Catherynne M Valente

I did some pretty crazy stuff that I never thought I would do, for the sake of a movie, like surfing in eight-foot waves in pitch-black darkness, where I can't see anything. That still haunts me, kind of, in my nightmares, but it was worth it, it was fun. — Leven Rambin

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. — Kurt Vonnegut

To feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the harborless without also trying to change the social order so that people can feed, clothe and shelter themselves is just to apply palliatives. It is to show a lack of faith in one's fellows, their responsibilitie s as children of God, heirs of heaven. — Dorothy Day