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Cholera Quotes

Browse 104 quotes about Cholera.

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Cholera Quotes

“March 1898 What a strange dream I had last night! I wandered in the warm streets of a port, in the low quarter of some Barcelona or Marseille. The streets were noisome, with their freshly-heaped piles of ordure outside the doors, in the blue shadows of their high roofs. They all led down towards the sea. The gold-spangled sea, seeming as if it had been polished by the sun, could be seen at the end of each thoroughfare, bristling with yard-arms and luminous masts. The implacable blue of the sky shone brilliantly overhead as I wandered through the long, cool and sombre corridors in the emptiness of a deserted district: a quarter which might almost have been dead, abruptly abandoned by seamen and foreigners. I was alone, subjected to the stares of prostitutes seated at their windows or in the doorways, whose eyes seemed to ransack my very soul. They did not speak to me. Leaning on the sides of tall bay-windows or huddled in doorways, they were silent. Their breasts and arms were bare, bizarrely made up in pink, their eyebrows were darkened, they wore their hair in corkscrew-curls, decorated with paper flowers and metal birds. And they were all exactly alike! They might have been huge marionettes, or tall mannequin dolls left behind in panic - for I divined that some plague, some frightful epidemic brought from the Orient by sailors, had swept through the town and emptied it of its inhabitants. I was alone with these simulacra of love, abandoned by the men on the doorsteps of the brothels. I had already been wandering for hours without being able to find a way out of that miserable quarter, obsessed by the fixed and varnished eyes of all those automata, when I was seized by the sudden thought that all these girls were dead, plague-stricken and putrefied by cholera where they stood, in the solitude, beneath their carmine plaster masks... and my entrails were liquefied by cold. In spite of that harrowing chill, I was drawn closer to a motionless girl. I saw that she was indeed wearing a mask... and the girl in the next doorway was also masked... and all of them were horribly alike under their identical crude colouring... I was alone with the masks, with the masked corpses, worse than the masks... when, all of a sudden, I perceived that beneath the false faces of plaster and cardboard, the eyes of these dead women were alive. Their vitreous eyes were looking at me... I woke up with a cry, for in that moment I had recognised all the women. They all had the eyes of Kranile and Willie, of Willie the mime and Kranile the dancer. Every one of the dead women had Kranile's left eye and Willie's right eye... so that every one of them appeared to be squinting. Am I to be haunted by masks now?”

DreamDeathMaskNightmareDeadPlaguePuppetsDecadenceMasksCholeraTownProstitutesMannequinsMannequinAutomataMarionettes
Book:Monsieur de Phocas
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“Mr. Maclean, the secretary of the Central Board of Health, on hearing that there was to be so large an assemblage of pure Scotchmen at the Freemason's, called upon Cuff, and told him it was his duty to guard againt all chances of infection. Mr. Cuff was directed to wash the walls thoroughly with chloride of lime, both before and after the meeting. The hall has, we are informed, undergone a complete fumegation, so that there is no cause to fear that ill consequences will arise from the circumstance of so extensive a body of our fellow-countrymen having met together.”

LondonCholeraScotsmen1832Chloride Of LimeFumegation
Book:Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, Volume 5
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“It is life, more than death, that has no limits. Love becomes greater and nobler and mightier in calamity. We men are the miserable slaves of prejudice. But when a women decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root. There is no god worth worrying about. Let time pass and we will see what it brings. Humanity, like the armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest. Those of us who make the rules have the greatest obligation to abide by them. I don't believe in God but I am afraid of him. It's better to arrive in time than to be invited. Unfaithful but not disloyal. Love, no matter what else it might be, is a natural talent. Nobody teaches life anything. The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love. There is no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid and dangerous, than a poet. Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. One comes into the world with a predetermined allotment of lays and whoever doesn't use them for whatever reason, one's own and someone else's, willingly or unwillingly, looses them forever.”

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Author:Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
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“Most world-historic events - great military battles, political revolutions-are self-consciously historic to the participants living through them. They act knowing that their decisions will be chronicled and dissected for decades or centuries to come. But epidemics create a kind of history from below: they can be world-changing, but the participants are almost inevitably ordinary folk, following their established routines, not thinking for a second about how their actions will be recorded for prosperity. And of course, if they do recognize that they are living through a historical crisis, it's often too late- because, like it or not, the primary way that ordinary people create this distinct genre of history is by dying.”

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Author:Steven Johnson
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“His mother knew before he told her because he lost his voice and his appetite, and spent the entire night tossing and turning in his bed. But when he began to wait to the answer to his first letter, his anguish was complicated by diarrhea and green vomit. He became disoriented and suffered from sudden fainting spells, and his mother was terrified because his condition did not resemble the turmoil of love so much as the devastation of cholera….because he had the weak pulse, the hoarse breathing, and the pale perspiration of a dying man. But his examination revealed that he had no fever, no pain anywhere, and that his only concrete feeling was an urgent desire to die. All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera.”

LoveCholera
Book:Love in the Time of Cholera
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“Only yesterday mankind lived in fear of the scourges of smallpox, cholera and plague that once swept nations before them. Now our major concern is no longer with the disease organisms that once were omnipresent; sanitation, better living conditions, and new drugs have given us a high degree of control over infectious disease. Today we are concerned with a different kind of hazard that lurks in our environment-a hazard we ourselves have introduced into our world as our modern way of life has evolved.”

WorldWayKindDifferentTodayGivenNationsEnvironmentModernConditionsMankindDrugDiseaseDegreesMajorsConcernConcernedYesterdayOur WorldDifferent KindsOrganismsPlagueOur EnvironmentHazardsScourgeCholeraSanitationSmallpoxInfectious DiseasesLiving Conditions
Book:Silent Spring
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“Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.”

WayMightCultureWaterCitiesRussiaAccuracyContainingGreat CitiesCholeraTyphoid
Book:The Irrepressible Churchill: Stories, Sayings and Impressions of Sir Winston Churchill
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“All over East Africa-indeed, all over Africa-it is normal for people to walk a kilometer or two or six for water. In more arid areas, people walk even greater distances, and sometimes all they find at the end is a pond slimy with overuse. More than 90 percent of Africans still dig for their water, and waterborne diseases such as typhoid, dysentery, bilharzia, and cholera are common. The bodies of many Africans are a stew of parasites. In some areas the wells are so far below the earth's surface that chains of people are required to pass up the water.”

PeopleWellsStillsTwoEndsSometimesBodyEarthWaterWalksCommonGreaterDiseaseNormalSixPercentAreasDistanceEnvironmentalSurfaceEastChainsPondsParasitesStewCholeraEast AfricaTyphoidDysentery
Author:Marq de Villiers
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“Mann is widely recognized as a master of irony and ambiguity, yet it's remarkable how quickly people foreclose options he carefully leaves open. Lots of readers - including eminent critics - jump to conclusions: that Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy is a central background text, that Aschenbach is an inferior writer, that he's never been attracted by pubescent male beauty before, that he dies of cholera.”

PeopleDiesMastersReaderBirthTragedyCriticsMalesIncludingBackgroundsConclusionIronyRemarkableInferiorsAmbiguityCholeraMale Beauty
Author:Philip Kitcher
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“Read Mann's notes, which contain precise accounts of cholera and its symptoms, and observe how careful he is throughout his fiction in getting medical details straight - then you might begin to wonder whether cholera is the only candidate for the cause of Aschenbach's death. What results from this, I think, is a deeper appreciation of Mann's brilliance in keeping so many possibilities in play. The ambiguity is even more artful than people have realized.”

PeopleThinkingPlayMightCausesResultsFictionWonderPossibilityAccountsNotesDetailsCarefulAppreciationDeeperMedicalCandidatesPreciseSymptomsAmbiguityBrillianceCholera
Author:Philip Kitcher
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“A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.”

KnowsMenLooksFatherGrowingDadMy DadDaddyGrowing OldFathers DayFather SonYour DadFather And SonBeing A FatherCholeraGreat FatherHappy First Fathers DayBest FatherDaughter To FatherFathers Day InspirationalFunny Fathers DayHappy Fathers DayFatheringHappy Fathers Day GodCute Fathers DayGreat DadFunny FatherFunny Happy Fathers DayInspirational FatherFathers Day ImagesHappy Fathers Day ImagesFathers Day PoemsChristian Fathers DayBiological Fathers
Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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“The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.”

EndsProblemNightMarriageMorningBreakfastWeddingEvery NightEvery MorningMaking LoveMarriage AdviceFunny MarriageLove And MarriagePositive MarriageMarriage LoveCholeraGreat MarriageBest MarriageFunny WeddingOne Hundred Years Of SolitudeWeddings And LoveWedding LoveBefore MarriageBreakfast Being ImportantHappy Marriage Advice
Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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“With her Florentino Ariza learned what he had already experienced many times without realizing it: that one can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the same sorrow with each, and not betray any of them. Alone in the midst of the crowd on the pier, he said to himself in a flash of anger: 'My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse.”

PeopleFeelsHeartSaidRealizingRoomsMy HeartSorrowCrowdsMidstBetrayFlashCholeraPiers
Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”

PeopleLoveLifeHeartDifferentCharacterHandsBeautifulLaughingMovementApproachLaughterOrdinaryStonesGoldMadDareFlightSpellsDestroyingGesturesHeelsSighVeilsBreezeOrdinary PeopleDisturbedIndicationSeductiveCholeraBraidsPaving
Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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“Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”

StillsTogetherCoursesMoralVictoryGloryConsciousHatredOvercomingAdversityGratefulIncrediblesTrialsShoreExcessConspiracyFlashFabulousReciprocalCholeraInstantaneousIncomprehensionNastinessConjugal
Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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