An imaginary ailment is worse than a disease.

This saying is attributed broadly to the Yiddish proverb tradition rather than to a single identifiable author or moment. It reflects a common theme in Eastern European Jewish folk wisdom: anxiety, worry, and obsessive self-scrutiny can create suffering independent of any physical condition. In communities where illness and hardship were familiar realities, proverbs often distinguished between tangible misfortune and the additional torment produced by fear, rumination, or hypochondria. The line is typically used in everyday admonition—urging someone not to “borrow trouble,” not to catastrophize symptoms, and not to let imagined scenarios eclipse practical coping with real problems.

The proverb contrasts a real disease—painful but concrete and potentially treatable—with an imagined ailment that can be limitless. It suggests that fear and fixation can produce suffering more pervasive than bodily illness: the imagination supplies endless symptoms, scenarios, and dread, while a real diagnosis at least defines the problem. The saying also implies a moral-psychological lesson: attention and belief shape experience, so unchecked worry can become a self-inflicted burden. In modern terms it speaks to anxiety disorders and hypochondria, but its broader point is that mental anguish can outstrip physical hardship when the mind continually rehearses worst-case possibilities.