Convalescence Quotes

“By out-talking or bad-mouthing people, some get hoisted by their own petard, ultimately. When their sense of shame makes them crawl back to the open, they can only recover through a convalescing remedy of humbleness. After an exhausting journey throughout the scorching desert of disgrace, they come to know how to be reborn from themselves. This rebirth allows them to recognize their true selves and to become relatable again. ("Waiting for emancipation")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The free spirit again draws near to life - slowly, to be sure, almost reluctantly, almost mistrustfully. It again grows warmer about him, yellower as it were; feeling and feeling for others acquire depth, warm breezes of all kind blow across him. It seems to him as if his eyes are only now open to what is close at hand. he is astonished and sits silent: where had he been? These close and closest things: how changed they seem! what bloom and magic they have acquired!

He looks back gratefully - grateful to his wandering, to his hardness and self-alienation, to his viewing of far distances and bird-like flights in cold heights. What a good thing he had not always stayed "at home," stayed "under his own roof" like a delicate apathetic loafer! He had been -beside himself-: no doubt about that.

Only now does he see himself - and what surprises he experiences as he does so! What unprecedented shudders! What happiness even in the weariness, the old sickness, the relapses of the convalescent! How he loves to sit sadly still, to spin out patience, to lie in the sun! Who understands as he does the joy that comes in winter, the spots of sunlight on the wall!

They are the most grateful animals in the world, also the most modest, these convalescents and lizards again half-turned towards life: - there are some among them who allow no day to pass without hanging a little song of praise on the hem of its departing robe. And to speak seriously: to become sick in the manner of these free spirits, to remain sick for a long time and then, slowly, slowly, to become healthy, by which I mean "healthier," is a fundamental cure for all pessimism.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“I was being cured of soldiering on endlessly: my job was now to be still, which had become almost easy at last.”
― Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

“Celui qui souffre d'un mal caractérisé n'a pas le droit de se plaindre : il a une occupation. Les grands souffrants ne s'ennuient jamais : la maladie les remplit, comme le remords nourrit les grands coupables. Car toute souffrance intense suscite un simulacre de plénitude et propose à la conscience une réalité terrible, qu'elle ne saurait éluder ; tandis que la souffrance sans matière dans ce deuil temporel qu'est l' ennui n'oppose à la conscience rien qui l'oblige à une démarche fructueuse. Comment guérir d'un mal non localisé et suprêmement imprécis, qui frappe le corps sans y laisser d'empreinte, qui s'insinue dans l'âme sans y marquer de signe ? Il ressemble à une maladie à laquelle nous aurions survécu, mais qui aurait absorbé nos possibilités, nos réserves d' attention et nous aurait laissés impuissants à combler le vide qui suit la disparition de nos affres et l'évanouissement de nos tourments. L'enfer est un havre auprès de ce dépaysement dans le temps, de cette langueur vide et prostrée où rien ne nous arrête sinon le spectacle de l'univers qui se carie sous nos regard.
Quelle thérapeutique employer contre une maladie dont nous ne nous souvenons plus et dont les suites empiètent sur nos jours ? Comment inventer un remède à l'existence, comment conclure cette guérison sans fin ? Et comment se remettre de sa naissance ?
L'ennui, cette convalescence incurable ...”
― Cioran, Précis de décomposition

“There is nothing more tragic for a man who has been expecting to die than a long convalescence.”
― André Gide, The Immoralist