There is no room for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. The mine, the factory, the dockyard, the salt sea waves, the field to till, the home, the hospital, the chair of the scientist, the pulpit of the preacher - from the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honor; all have their part to play.
This is no time to speak of the hopes of the future, or the broader world which lies beyond our struggles and our victory. We have to win that world for our children. We have to win it by our sacrifices. We have not won it yet. The crisis is upon us. . . . In this strange, terrible world war there is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt; service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. The mine, the factory, the dockyard, the salt sea waves, the fields to till, the home, the hospital, the chair of the scientist, the pulpit of the preacher - from the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honor; all have their part to play.
The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while all the people walking about are mad is merely a literary cliche, put about by people who should be locked up. I assure you there is not much in it. Taken as a whole, the sane are out there the sick are in here. For example you are in here because you have delusions that sane people are put in mental hospitals.
Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. Their families came and took them away. Eighty years later, by a bizarre coincidence, they lay in the same hospital, on their deathbeds, next to each other. One of them looked at the other and said, "So. What did you think?"
He pulls a knife you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way.
"A hospital is no place to be sick."
Recovering in a Calcutta, India hospital. I think I'm more difficult than critical.
I broke my leg - after doing the first four days of A Midsummer's Night Dream - at Big Bear in a toboggan accident where I was almost killed. I was in the front of the toboggan with three big guys in back of me with a lot of inertia of the heavy weight, and my foot slipped off the toboggan, went right in the snow and split me up the middle. If it hadn't broken my femur at the exact time, I would have been killed. . . . While I was recuperating there (Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital) to get back on the set of A Midsummer's Night Dream - they were waiting for me - where I did that entire picture in a plaster of Paris cast covered up by Olivia De Havilland's dress . . . while I'm at the Presbyterian Hospital and I'm recuperating, my wife (Jan) is born on the 6th floor. Now that's a billion-to-one shot.
The healing power of being in a garden is now being documented by medical studies. These studies show that patients in hospitals who look out on a garden take less medication and go home quicker than those who look out on a parking lot or on other buildings. Alzheimer's patients are no longer violent when placed in a garden.
Let no man deceive you with vain words or vain hopes or false notions of a slight and sudden repentance. As if heaven were a hospital founded on purpose to receive all sick and maimed persons that, when they can live no longer to the lusts of the flesh and the sinful pleasures of this world, can but put up a cold and formal petition to be admitted there. No, no, as sure as God is true, they shall never see the Kingdom of God who, instead of seeking it in the first place, make it their last refuge and retreat.
Private patients, if they do not like me, can go elsewhere; but the poor devils in the hospital I am bound to take care of.
Since I was born I had assumed that the world ran on very simple lines, like a larger version of our church. Now I was finding that even the church was sometimes confused. This was a problem. But not one I chose to deal with for many years more. The problem there and then was what was going to happen to me. The Victoria Hospital was big and frightening, and I couldn't even sing to any effect because I couldn't hear what I was singing. There was nothing to read except some dental notices and an instruction leaflet for the X-ray machine. I tried to build an igloo out of the orange peel but it kept falling down and even when I stood up I didn't have an Eskimo to put in it, so I had to invent a story about 'How Eskimo Got Eaten', which made me even more miserable. It's always the same with diversions; you get involved.
One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is that assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind.
American stuntmen are smart -they think about safety. When they do a jump in a car, they calculate everything: the speed, the distance. . . . But in Hong Kong, we don't know how to count. Everything we do is a guess. If you've got the guts, you do it. All of my stuntmen have gotten hurt. I say, "Do it! Camera, action, jump!" Boom! Ambulance! Hospital! Next stuntman!
Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is, in this sense, a hospital.
I wonder if the human touch, which people have, is not one of the greatest assets that one can have. You meet some people, and immediately you feel their warmth of mind or heart. You read a book, sit before the performance of a fine actor, or read a poem - and there it is - something that streams into your consciousness. . . . Those who keep climbing higher, in their chosen work, all have this outstanding something. The nurse in the hospital, the man who delivers your mail, the clerk behind many a store counter, and the effective minister or public speaker. Without this human touch, hope has little on which to feed or thrive.
I think it frets the saints in heaven to see How many desolate creatures on the earth Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship And social comfort, in a hospital.
A preacher was operated on for a hernia. As this was about the time of the first world war he was given ether. As he was coming out of the anesthetic a fire broke out in the building next door. As the flames began to show through the hospital windows the nurse pulled the shades down. She didn't want the preacher to think his operation had been a failure.
