Health

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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, disease, injury or needless pain.

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Alphabetized by author

Song brings us health, and blossoms will heal wounds. Therefore, I say, happy are those who understand sound and color.
- Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book Two: Illumination, 108. (1925)

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

Cur moriatur homo, cui salvia crescit in horto?
- Why should (need) a man die who has sage in his garden?
- Anonymous, Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, l. 177. Text and translation: Sir Alexander Chope (1830)

Health, eldest of Gods, with thee may I dwell for the rest of my life and find thee a gracious house-mate. If there be any joy in wealth, or in children, or in that kingly rule that maketh men like to Gods, or in the desires we hunt with the secret nets of Aphrodite, or if there be any other delight or diversion sent of Heaven unto man, ’tis with thy aid, blessed Health, that they all do thrive and shine in the converse of the Graces; and without thee no man alive is happy.
- Ariphron of Sicyon, Paean to Health, quoted by Athenaeus, 15. 701f; translated by J. M. Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, vol. 3 (1927), p. 400

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, "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.
- Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada, v. 202, as translated by Narada Maha Thera

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.
- Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903)

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.
- George Carlin, Brain Droppings (1998), p. 120

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

There are more disorders of the mind than of the body, and they are of a more dangerous nature.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes (c. 45 BCE), bk. 3, sec. III, p. 93, as translated by Charles Duke Yonge (1877 ed.)

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.

You take care of your personal health because you want to live a long time, and you want to be happy. You want to be healthy. But we can't be happy or healthy if we don't take care of our life support system, the planet.
- Sylvia Earle Interview with NPR (25 June 2021)

If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.
- Clement Freud, as quoted in The Observer (27 December 1964)

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), pt. 1, no. 31

If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose (1819)

A cool mouth, and warm feet, live long.
- George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651)

He that goes to bed thirsty rises healthy.
- George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
- Attributed to Markus Herz by Ernst von Feuchtersleben, Zur Diätetik der Seele (1841), p. 95. (more info).

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.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), XI

If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Over the Teacups (1891).

The causes which affect human health are often obscure, many of them so subtile that they are discerned with difficulty, and can only be appreciated by those who devote their time to the study and observation of them through all their changes. They even sometimes escape the keenest observation of the most accurate observers; yet it is reasonable to suppose that those who prosecute such investigations with zeal actually make some progress in knowledge; and if any discovery of knowledge be made, it is not a matter of doubt that it should be employed to assure the public good. It is easier to preserve health than to cure disease, and it implies less expense of means.
- Robert Jackson, (1854). "Suggestions regarding the appointment of inspectors of health in the army". The Lancet 63 (1592): 240-241. (communicated by J. Ranald Martin)

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.

There is no greater goal than to truly improve Mr and Ms Everyone's health, as an innovator that is where I want to spend my energy.
- Philippe Kahn, interview with NPR (January 2007), regarding innovative uses of the camera phone

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man's self to himself!
- Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia (1833).

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).

Tabi ni yande
yume wa kareno o
kakemeguru.
- Fallen sick on a journey,
  In dreams I run wildly
  Over a withered moor
- Attributed to Matsuo Bashō in the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 1 (1983), p. 145

If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.
- Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook (1960)

Health consists with Temperance alone.
- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), ep. 4, l. 81

Healthy people are invalids who don't know it.
- Jules Romains, Dr. Knock (1923).

May be he is not well:
Infirmity doth still neglect all office
Whereto our health is bound.
- William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), act 2, sc. 4, l. 107

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.
- Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

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.
- James Thomson, Castle of Indolence (1748), Canto II, Stanza 55

Health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of: a blessing that money cannot buy.
- Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653–55), pt. 1, ch. 21

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.
- Joseph Addison, The Spectator, No. 387.

When health, affrighted, spreads her rosy wing,
And flies with every changing gale of spring.
- Lord Byron, Childish Recollections, line 3.

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 (early 2nd century), X. 356.

Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady.
- François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, No. 285.

Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit.
- It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.
- Seneca the Younger, Hippolyus, CCXLIX.

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.
- John Webster, Westward Ho, Act V, scene 3, line 345.

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
- World Health Organization, Constitution of World Health Organization

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