Literary notes about Panacea (AI summary)
The term "panacea" in literature often functions as a flexible metaphor for a universal remedy—sometimes embraced with sincere hope and other times deployed with irony or critique. In some works it is celebrated as an almost magical cure-all, as seen when it is compared with mythic herbs and ancient notions of healing ([1], [2], [3]), while in other texts the term is used sarcastically or critically to denote solutions that are overly simplistic or ultimately ineffective ([4], [5]). Literary figures have applied “panacea” to a range of remedies from domestic fixes and personal comforts ([6], [7]) to political innovations touted as cures for systemic ills ([8], [9]), and even to the notion of escape as the sole deliverance in a given crisis ([10]). In this way, "panacea" serves as a multifaceted symbol, its meaning shifting contextually between genuine optimism and pointed skepticism ([11], [12], [13], [14]).
- With your nourishing growth you surpass dittany, Ambrosia, and fragrant panacea.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - Again, the Druidical notion that the mistletoe was an “all-healer” or panacea may be compared with a notion entertained by the Walos of Senegambia.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - —Makabuhay is one of the most widely known and used plants in the Philippines; a sort of panacea applied to all bodily afflictions.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera - The good woman no sooner felt the gold within her palm, than her temper began (such is the efficacy of that panacea) to be mollified.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding - Did its friends hail it as a panacea, its enemies retorted that it was a slow poison.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - Gentle panacea of domestic troubles, Faithful author of that sweet nepenthe which deadens all the ills that married folks are heir to.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - Poor mamma’s panacea.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - Marxism was one method of accomplishing this, and its panacea was the doing away with private property in machines and materials.
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. Du Bois - Republicanism is not itself a panacea for economic difficulties.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein - There is but one panacea: Escape!
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. Du Bois - Grandpapa says it is a panacea.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - “That's your panacea, isn't it?”
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald - This is the panacea that is always being recommended to us.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde - It's the only panacea I know.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
