Before the days of antibiotics, Robert Louis Stevenson, the great Scottish novelist and author of Treasure Island, was bedridden with consumption [tuberculosis] a great deal. But the disease never stifled his optimism. Once when his wife heard him coughing badly, she said to him, ‘I expect you still believe it’s a wonderful day.’ Stevenson looked at the rays of sunshine bouncing off the walls of his bedroom, and then replied: ‘I do. I will never permit a row of medicine bottles to block my horizon.’

Source: John Maxwell, 1993, The Winning Attitude, Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, p.114