Life is an incurable disease.

Cowley’s aphorism treats human existence as a condition that cannot be “cured” because its endpoint—death—is built into it from the start. Calling life a “disease” compresses a stoic, disenchanted view of mortality into a paradox: what we most cherish is also what inevitably consumes us. The line can be read as a critique of human striving for permanence or perfect happiness; all remedies are temporary, because the underlying condition persists. At the same time, the bleakness can sharpen life’s value: if life is incurable, the task is not to eliminate suffering but to live lucidly within finitude.