“I have clearly recorded this: for one can learn good lessons also from what has been tried but clearly has not succeeded, when it is clear why it has not succeeded.”

What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will.

We must turn to nature itself, to the observations of the body in health and in disease to learn the truth.

All diseases begin in the gut.

Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature. When enough sins have accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear.

The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy, and as plump as nature intended him to be; for the common crowd consider those who are not of this excellent bodily condition to be unable to take care of themselves.

Physicians are many in title but very few in reality.

Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

Whoever wishes to investigate medicine should proceed thus: In the first place, consider the seasons of the year and what effect each of them produces.

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.

Sport is a preserver of health.

About medications that are drunk or applied to wounds it is worth learning from everyone; for people do not discover these by reasoning but by chance, and experts not more than laymen.

He who wishes to be a surgeon should go to war.

Things that are holy are revealed only to men who are holy.

The natural force within each of us is that greatest healer of all.

In all abundance there is lack.

I started the Pies Descalzos foundation in Colombia when I was 18, and since then I have been very involved in the crusade for education.

Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.

You’ve done nothing, been nowhere. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?”

Come what may, I have been blest.

What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.

I’ve always been interested in jobs in the NBA. But I’ve been in this for 20 years and it might be time to do something else.

As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home -first for six years, then for 19 months.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.