Physic Quotes & Sayings

Few take advice, or physic, without wry faces at it. — Augustus William Hare

A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors. — Joseph Addison

Also, the high standard held up to the public mind by the College of which which gave its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly rarefied medical instruction obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. — George Eliot

No, take more! What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship, Where [one] part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance - it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr'd, it follows Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore beseech you - You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on't; that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That's sure of death without it - at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonor Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become't; Not having the power to do the good it would, For th' ill which doth control't. — William Shakespeare

Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it. — William Shakespeare

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good;
A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies when first it 'gins to bud;
A brittle that's broken presently;
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.
And as goods lost are seld or never found,
As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh,
As flowers dead lie withered on the ground,
As broken glass no cement can redress;
So beauty blemished once, for ever lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost. — William Shakespeare

There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction bat revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient? — Michel De Montaigne

It becomes one who is called to be a soldier, and to go a warfare, to endeavor to excel in the art of war. It becomes one who is called to be a mariner, and to spend his life in sailing the ocean, to endeavor to excel in the art of navigation. It becomes one who professes to be a physician, and devotes himself to that work, to endeavor to excel in the knowledge of those things which pertain to the art of physic. So it becomes all such as profess to be Christians, and to devote themselves to the practice of Christianity, to endeavor to excel in the knowledge of divinity. — Jonathan Edwards

Fun is a sugar-coated physic. — Josh Billings

The inquiries of the jurist are in truth prosecuted much as inquiry in physic and physiology was prosecuted before observation had taken the place of assumption. — Henry James Sumner Maine

The theatre is my drug. And my illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality. — John Wilmot

Of this they drank half a pint every day, and sometimes more or less, as it operated, by way of gentle physic. Two others had each two oranges and one lemon given them every day. These they ate with greediness, at different times, upon an empty stomach. — James Lind

To ABDUCE (ABDU'CE) v.a.[Lat. abduco.]To draw to a different part; to withdraw one part from another.A word chiefly used in physic or science. And if we abduce the eye unto either corner, the object will not duplicate; for, in that position, the axis of the cones remain in the same plain, as is demonstrated in the optics delivered by Galen.Brown'sVulgar Errours,b. iii. c. 20. — Samuel Johnson

Love labor: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayest for physic. It is wholesome for thy body and good for thy mind. — William Penn

Affliction is a divine diet which though it be not pleasing to mankind, yet almighty God hath often imposed it as a good, thought bitter, physic, to those children whose souls are dearest to him. — Izaak Walton

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except. — William Shakespeare

Despise no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it ... There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man's observation, what he finds good and of what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health. — Francis Bacon

Fashion is the great governor of this world; it presides, not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind; indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at others universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion. — Henry Fielding

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field. — Alexander Pope

Kitchen Physic is the best Physic. — Jonathan Swift

Happiness must preclude false indulgence and physic. — Jane Austen

Relying on physical remedies alone was often seen as downright ungodly: in England, Puritan minister John Sym advised "caution" that people "dote not upon, nor trust, or ascribe too much to physical means; but that we carefully look and pray to God for a blessing by the warrantable use of them." To do otherwise - to rely on a physic or powder alone - would be to put the material above the spiritual. That was why a strictly mechanical approach to medicine was considered dangerously atheistic. — Russell Shorto

It is an aphorism in physic, that unwholesome airs, because perpetually sucked into the lungs, do distemper health more than coarser diet used but at set times. The like may be said of society, which, if good, is a better refiner of the spirits than ordinary books. — Frances Osborne

1. Turn all care out of your head as soon as you mount the chaise.
2. Do not think about frugality: your health is worth more than it can cost.
3. Do not continue any day's journey to fatigue.
4. Take now and then a day's rest.
5. Get a smart seasickness if you can.
6. Cast away all anxiety, and keep your mind easy.
This last direction is the principal; with an unquiet mind neither exercise, nor diet, nor physic can be of much use. — Samuel Johnson

Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them And show the heavens more just. — William Shakespeare

O my good lord, that comfort comes too late,
'Tis like a pardon after execution.
That gentle physic, given in time, had cured me;
But now I am past all comforts here but prayers. — William Shakespeare

Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of disease. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue. — Jonathan Swift

Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the physic predecessor of all real understanding. — Robert M. Pirsig

Of old when folk lay sick and sorely tried The doctors gave them physic, and they died. But here's a happier age: for now we know Both how to make men sick and keep them so. — Hilaire Belloc

A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit: Bid Economy10 farewell, and11 Galen come, Seeing, Ubi desinit philosophus, ibi incipit medicus: Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold, And be eterniz'd for some wondrous cure: Summum bonum medicinae sanitas, The end of physic is our body's health. — Christopher Marlowe

...[M]oral instruction, although containing much that is convincing for the reason, ...accomplishes... little... [because] the teachers themselves have not got their own notions clear, and when they endeavor to make up for this by raking up motives of moral goodness from every quarter, trying to make their physic right strong, they spoil it. — Immanuel Kant

I study myself more than any other subject; it is my metaphysic, and my physic. — William Drummond

We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo ... With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far. — Michel De Montaigne

It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art. — Samuel Johnson

Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise. — Joseph Addison

Whatever reader desires to have a thorough comprehension of an author's thoughts cannot take a better method than by putting himself into the circumstances and postures of life that the author was in upon every important passage as it flowed from his pen; for this will introduce a parity and strict correspondence of ideas between the reader and the author. Now, to assist the diligent reader in so delicate an affair, as far as brevity will permit, I have recollected that the shrewdest pieces of this treatise were conceived in bed in a garret; at other times (for a reason best known to myself) I thought fit to sharpen my invention with hunger; and in general, the whole work was begun, continued, and ended under a long course of physic and great want of money. — Jonathan Swift

If it were a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt for learning - but for these ... the number of authors and of writing would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold. — Jonathan Swift

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross. — William Shakespeare

[Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions! — Adam Sedgwick

Confidence and hope do more good than physic. — Galen

Use law and physic only for necessity; they that use them otherwise abuse themselves unto weak bodies, and light purses; they are good remedies, bad businesses, and worse recreations. — Francis Quarles

Philosophy is odious and obscure;
Both law and physic are for petty wits;
Divinity is basest of the three,
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile.
'Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me. — Christopher Marlowe

In Physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors. — John Milton

Most satirists are indeed a public scourge; Their mildest physic is a farrier's purge; Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr'd, The milk of their good purpose all to curd. Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse, By lean despair upon an empty purse. — William Cowper

Physic himself must fade.
All things to end are made;
The plague full swift goes by.
I am sick, I must die
P.98 — Ally Condie

I remember what Anna called the three of us.
The Pilot. The Poet. The Physic.
They are in all of us. I believe this. They every person might have a way to fly, a line of poetry to put down for others to see, a hand to heal. — Ally Condie

A physician, after he had felt the pulse of Pausanias, and considered his constitution, saying, "He ails nothing," "It is because, sir," he replied, "I use none of your physic. — Plutarch

You have to get into the water and learn against what seems to be the law gravity to float and dancing, or athletics takes you years before you develop a skill. But if you work at it, practicing daily, you can enable your body to do things that are utterly impossible to an untrained physic. — Karen Armstrong

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head! Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense! See Mystery to Mathematics fly! — Alexander Pope

Why, Affery, woman - Affery! You have been getting out of bed in your sleep, my dear! I come up, after having fallen asleep myself, below, and find you in your wrapper here, with the nightmare. Affery, woman,' said Mr Flintwinch, with a friendly grin on his expressive countenance, 'if you ever have a dream of this sort again, it'll be a sign of your being in want of physic. And I'll give you such a dose, old woman - such a dose! — Charles Dickens

The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. The continent we inhabit is to be physic andfood for our mind, as well as our body. The land, with its tranquilizing, sanative influences, is to repair the errors of a scholastic and traditional education, and bring us to just relations with men and things. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
The arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave. — Alexander Pope

Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance. — Joseph Addison