Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. ~ Émile Coué

Health is a term referring to levels of functional or metabolic efficiency of living beings. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind and body, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or needless pain.

Quotes

Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgement. A healthy person is never unhappy. ~ George Ohsawa
Alphabetized by author
If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going. ~ E. B. White
  • [T]he queen of heaven and earth, the provider of food, the stewardess of Enlil, the sweet breast satisfying all lands, the bringer of abundance, who can diagnose the intentions of the virulent asag demon and who checks people's bones; who examines the sinews of life and the sinews of death, comforting those joints; who knows every sick spot where there is affliction, torment or distress -- the kindly physician, the exorcist to the sick, who looks after the hearts of humans.
  • The best six doctors anywhere
    And no one can deny it
    Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
    Exercise and diet.
    These six will gladly you attend
    If only you are willing
    Your mind they'll ease
    Your will they'll mend
    And charge you not a shilling.
    • Anonymous nursery rhyme set to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", quoted in "The Health Club" in School Life, Vol. IV (January - June 1920), p. 17
  • Contact with the sun should be much sought after, and the vitalization that comes through its rays. The sun kills all germs and frees from disease.
  • The free use of salt sea bathing has a definite effect on the healthiness of the physical body. The water, incidentally absorbed through the medium of the skin and by the mouth, has a vitally prophylactic effect.
  • From one angle, disease is a process of liberation, and the enemy of that which is static and crystalised. Think not, from what I say, that therefore disease should be welcomed, and that the process of death should be cherished. Were that the case, one would cultivate disease, and put a premium on suicide. Fortunately for humanity, the whole tendency of life is against disease, and the reaction of the form life upon the thought of man, fosters the fear of death. This has been rightly so, for the instinct of self-preservation and the preservation of form integrity, is a vital principle in matter, and the tendency to self-perpetuation of the life within the form, is one of our greatest God-given capacities, and will persist. But in the human family this must eventually give place to... [viewing] death as the organised, freeing process...
  • I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.
    • Robert Benchley, in "Hiccoughing Makes Us Fat" in No Poems: or Around the World Backwards and Sideways (1932).
  • Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.
  • I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
  • Healthy does not mean "healthful." Healthy is a condition, healthful is a property. Vegetables aren't healthy, they're dead. No food is healthy. Unless you have an eggplant that's doing push-ups. Push-ups are healthful.
  • The most effective route to achieving optimal health is by channeling the intrinsic methods that the human body has developed during its hundreds of thousands years on Earth. Recommendations that drastically diverge from this pattern will likely lead to poorer health, which is indeed what has been witnessed over the past three decades.
  • Thank Him for health. Consecrate it as His trust to innocent enjoyment, manly effort, social usefulness, and preparation for an honorable and holy career.
    • William Ellery Channing, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 299.
  • Cur moriatur homo, cui salvia crescit in horto?
    • Why should (need) a man die who has sage in his garden?
    • Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, line 177. Original and translation. pub. by Sir Alexander Chope (1830).
  • Of all the garden herbes none is of greater vertue than sage.
    • Thomas Cogan, Heaven of Health (1596). Quoting from Schola Salerni, p. 32.
  • Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.
    • Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.
      • Émile Coué, in his auto-suggestive formula for health, as quoted in The Practice of Autosuggestion by the Method of Emile Coué (1922) by Cyrus Harry Brooks
    • Variant translation: Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.
  • One of the problems today is that even people who eat sufficient volumes of food remain unhealthy because the food itself is denatured. Through chemical fertilizers we have denatured the very soil on which food is grown. It is not the bulk of food that matters; it is the vitamin energy in the food which keeps us healthy and guards against disease. No amount of vitamin supplements can make up for that energy direct from the sun. When food is denatured by chemical farming methods, the bulk of the food... has little or no effect in nourishing the body. A return to more traditional organic methods of farming will restore the vitality of food... Also, for countless aeons, we have buried our dead, with all their diseases, in the earth. These diseases seep out into the vegetable kingdom, which is eaten by the animal kingdom; people eat the animals, and the cycle goes on age after age.... Until we recognize cremation as the only hygienic way to restore the physical body to the earth after death, we will carry on that pattern of ill health from generation to generation.
    • Benjamin Creme in Maitreya's Mission Vol. III, Share International Foundation (1997)
  • The stress which exists in the world today is a result of competition and fear, the fear of failure, disease, death, war, calamity, and economic disruption. The pressure that these fears put on humanity inevitably results in psychosomatic diseases. The cure lies in a re-establishing of equilibrium. When we establish equilibrium in our lives through a restructuring of our political, economic and social institutions, we will find that the health of humanity will improve dramatically. We will not have to spend enormous sums of money maintaining health. In fact, illness prevention will become the norm. Disease can generally be prevented more easily than it can be cured.
    • Benjamin Creme in Maitreya's Mission Vol. III, Share International Foundation (1997)
  • If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.
  • Nor love, nor honour, wealth nor pow'r,
    Can give the heart a cheerful hour
    When health is lost. Be timely wise;
    With health all taste of pleasure flies.
    • John Gay, Fables (1727), Part I. Fable 31.
  • If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
  • You must all advance by taking good care of your health. Only by taking good care of your health, you can gain success. The fact is that if your health is not good, how can you do your service? Taking care of your health is as important as any of the other duties of your life. It is your duty towards your body. If your body does not work, how will you function and advance?
  • A cool mouth, and warm feet, live long.
  • He that goes to bed thirsty rises healthy.
  • Christ's gospel could never have been delivered by one who was diseased.
    • John McClellan Holmes, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 299.
  • There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness.
  • If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.
  • With your talents and industry, with science, and that stedfast honesty which eternally pursues right, regardless of consequences, you may promise yourself every thing—but health, without which there is no happiness. An attention to health then should take place of every other object. The time necessary to secure this by active exercises, should be devoted to it in preference to every other pursuit.
    • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. (July 6, 1787); in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1955), vol. 11, p. 558.
  • How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man's self to himself!
  • In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else.
    • Alison Rose Levy, in "An Ancient Cure for Modern Life" in Yoga Journal (January - February 2002).
  • Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgement. A healthy person is never unhappy.
    • George Ohsawa, in Essential Ohsawa : From Food to Health, Happiness to Freedom : Understanding the Basics of Macrobiotics (1994), p. 77.
  • Health consists with Temperance alone.
  • Will you touch, will you mend me Christ?
    Won't you touch, will you heal me Christ?
    Will you kiss, can you cure me Christ?
    Won't you kiss, won't you pay me Christ?
See my eyes, I can hardly see
See me stand, I can hardly walk
I believe you can make me whole
See my tongue, I can hardly talk.
See my skin, I'm a mass of blood
See my legs, I can hardly stand
I believe you can make me well
See my purse, I'm a poor, poor man.
  • Healthy people are invalids who don't know it.
  • May be he is not well:
    Infirmity doth still neglect all office
    Whereto our health is bound.
  • Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
  • As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body.
  • Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven,
    When drooping health and spirits go amiss?
    How tasteless then whatever can be given!
    Health is the vital principle of [bliss]],
    And exercise of health.
  • Health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of: a blessing that money cannot buy.
    • Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653-55), Part I, Chapter XXI.
  • If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going.
    • E. B. White, in a letter to the New York Herald Tribune (29 November 1947).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 356-57.
  • Health and cheerfulness mutually beget each other.
  • When health, affrighted, spreads her rosy wing,
    And flies with every changing gale of spring.
  • Homines ad deos nulla re propius accedunt quam salutem hominibus dando.
    • In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.
    • Cicero, Pro Ligario, XII.
  • Health that snuffs the morning air.
    • James Grainger, Solitude, An Ode, line 35.
  • Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.
    • Our prayers should be for a sound mind in a healthy body.
    • Juvenal, Satires, X. 356.
  • Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit.
  • Qui salubrem locum negligit, mente est captus atque ad agnatos et gentiles deducendus.
    • He who overlooks a healthy spot for the site of his house is mad and ought to be handed over to the care of his relations and friends.
    • Marcus Terentius Varro, De Re Rustica, I, 2.
  • Gold that buys health can never be ill spent,
    Nor hours laid out in harmless merriment.

Attributed

  • Tabi ni yande
    yume wa kareno o
    kakemeguru.
    • Fallen sick on a journey,
      In dreams I run wildly
      Over a withered moor
    • Matsuo Bashō, attributed in Kodansha encyclopedia of Japan, Volume 1 page 145 (see Google Books).

Also see

References

    This article is issued from Wikiquote. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.