Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the importance of understanding both the healer and the ailment for a complete perspective on health.
In this quote, John Donne emphasizes the significance of closely studying both the physician and the disease they treat. This suggests that true understanding of health and healing comes not just from examining the illness itself but also recognizing the role and approach of the caregiver. By observing the physician as diligently as the disease, one can gain insights into the healing process, balancing the study of both entities for a more holistic comprehension of health.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be delivered during a medical conference to emphasize the relationship between doctors and their patients.
More from John Donne
All quotes βReason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity
All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth onely in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield it self upon honest and lawfull terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.
Similar quotes
I do need publicity but not for what I do for good. I need publicity for my book. I need publicity for my fights. I need publicity for my movie but not for helping people. Then it is no longer sincere.
The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.
Name the different kinds of people,β said Miss Lupescu. βNow.β Bod thought for a moment. βThe living,β he said. βEr. The dead.β He stopped. Then, β... Cats?β he offered, uncertainly.
The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of this world is not 'to have and to hold' but "to give and serve."
None of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God β acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him.
Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not.