Quotations about Health

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind. ~G.K. Chesterton


There's lots of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it. ~Josh Billings


The greatest wealth is health. ~Virgil


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


Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. ~Doug Larson


Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. ~World Health Organization, 1948


The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing. ~Larry Dossey


Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway. ~Author Unknown


Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. ~Redd Foxx


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


In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired. ~Author Unknown


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.
~Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990


He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctors. ~Chinese Proverb


If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself. ~Leon Eldred


Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. ~Mark Twain


Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you! ~Tommy Smothers


They claim red meat is bad for you. But I never saw a sick-looking tiger. ~Chi Chi Rodriguez


Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something. ~Lord Chesterfield


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


The... patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop. ~Quentin Regestein


I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol. ~Author Unknown


Joy and Temperance and Repose
Slam the door on the doctor's nose.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


If I had my way I'd make health catching instead of disease. ~Robert Ingersoll


Sickness comes on horseback but departs on foot. ~Dutch Proverb, sometimes attributed to William C. Hazlitt


Like everybody else, when I don't know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds. ~George Jean Nathan


Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body. ~Cicero


If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want. ~Elbert Hubbard


People who are always taking care of their health are like misers who are hoarding a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy. ~Laurence Sterne


To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness. ~Henri Frederic Amiel


The longer I live the less confidence I have in drugs and the greater is my confidence in the regulation and administration of diet and regimen. ~John Redman Coxe, 1800


A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. ~Irish Proverb


Fresh air impoverishes the doctor. ~Danish Proverb


There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations, but there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache. ~Henry Lytton Bulwer


Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia. ~Napoleon I


The I in illness is isolation, and the crucial letters in wellness are we. ~Author unknown, as quoted in Mimi Guarneri, The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing


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, "An Ancient Cure for Modern Life," Yoga Journal, Jan/Feb 2002


Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once. ~Thomas Browne


When it comes to eating right and exercising, there is no "I'll start tomorrow." Tomorrow is disease. ~Terri Guillemets


What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. ~George Dennison Prentice, Prenticeana, 1860


Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. ~Marcel Proust


My own prescription for health is less paperwork and more running barefoot through the grass. ~Terri Guillemets


We drink one another's health and spoil our own. ~Jerome K. Jerome


In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible. ~Cicero



I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more. ~Henry Ward Beecher


Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open. ~B.K.S. Iyengar


Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws. ~Charles Simmons


Mens sana in corpore sano. (Your prayer must be for a sound mind in a sound body.) ~Juvenal


The hospitals and graveyards are filled with those who refused to acknowledge the virtues of physical morality. ~Dr Ron Spallone, denverchiropractor.com


The appearance of a disease is swift as an arrow; its disappearance slow, like a thread. ~Chinese Proverb


Nature does require
Her time of preservation, which perforce
I her frail son amongst my brethren mortal
Must give my attendance to.
~William Shakespeare


Health is like munny, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it. ~Josh Billings


Adam and Eve ate the first vitamins, including the package. ~E.R. Squibb


Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies. ~Leo Tolstoy


Gold that buys health can never be ill spent. ~Thomas Dekker, Westward Ho, 1604


Disease is somatic; the suffering from it, psychic. ~Martin H. Fischer


Health of body and mind is a great blessing, if we can bear it. ~John Henry Cardinal Newman


Diseases crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, rivel them up like old apples, make them as so many Anatomies. ~Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy


Sometimes I get the feeling the aspirin companies are sponsoring my headaches. ~Terri Guillemets


A healthy body is the guest-chamber of the soul; a sick, its prison. ~Francis Bacon


An imaginary ailment is worse than a disease. ~Yiddish Proverb


Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only, but the mind and spirit as well;... and not today's pain or pleasure alone, but the whole being and outlook of a man. ~James H. West


Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady. ~François Duc de la Rochefoucauld


From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health. ~Catalan Proverb


If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician. ~Meryl Streep


Just because you're not sick doesn't mean you're healthy. ~Author Unknown


Every man's disease is his personal property. ~Alonzo Clark


Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene
Supports the mind supports the body too.
~John Armstrong


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," No Poems: or around the world backwards and sideways, 1932


Physick, for the most part, is nothing else but the Substitute of Exercise or Temperance. ~Joseph Addison


A bad cold wouldn't be so annoying if it weren't for the advice of our friends. ~Kin Hubbard


Men make use of their illnesses at least as much as they are made use of by them. ~Aldous Huxley


The most important thing in illness is never to lose heart. ~Nikolai Lenin


The part can never be well unless the whole is well. ~Plato


The scientific truth may be put quite briefly; eat moderately, having an ordinary mixed diet, and don't worry. ~Robert Hutchison, 1932


I am at the moment deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints and fractious in temper from a most intolerable and oppressive cold. ~Charles Dickens


If by gaining knowledge we destroy our health, we labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands. ~John Locke


To avoid sickness eat less; to prolong life worry less. ~Chu Hui Weng


When the head aches, all the body is the worse. ~English Proverb


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


After these two, Dr. Diet and Dr. Quiet, Dr. Merriman is requisite to preserve health. ~James Howell


When a man is ill his very goodness is sickly. ~Friedrich Nietzsche


The deviation of man from the state in which he was originally placed by nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of disease. ~Edward Jenner


There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood. ~Charles Dickens


Bacteria keeps us from heaven and puts us there. ~Martin H. Fischer


Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other. ~Joseph Addison


It is a lot harder to keep people well than it is to just get them over a sickness. ~DeForest Clinton Jarvis


Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well. ~Marcus Valerius Martial


The mind has great influence over the body, and maladies often have their origin there. ~Moliere


Confidence and hope do more good than physic. ~Galen


Live in rooms full of light
Avoid heavy food
Be moderate in the drinking of wine
Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics
Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water
Change surroundings and take long journeys
Strictly avoid frightening ideas
Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements
Listen to music.
~A. Cornelius Celsus


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. ~Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1977


Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them. ~Martin H. Fischer


How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man's self to himself! ~Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia


Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful. ~Denis Diderot


Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone; it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


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


First need in the reform of hospital management? That's easy! The death of all dietitians, and the resurrection of a French chef. ~Martin H. Fischer


In the face of such overwhelming statistical possibilities hypochondria has always seems to me to be the only rational position to take on life. ~John Diamond


He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything. ~Arabic Proverb


A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter


Happiness lies, first of all, in health. ~George William Curtis, Lotus-Eating


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


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


If you do everything you should do, and do not do anything you should not do, you will, according to the best available statistics, live exactly eighteen hours longer than you would otherwise. ~Logain Clendening


Health is a relationship between you and your body. ~Terri Guillemets


It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like. ~Jackie Mason


Health is merely the slowest way someone can die. ~Author Unknown


May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer! or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after! ~Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1749


Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself. ~Sydney J. Harris


My fat scares me - it's a ticking time bomb. ~Carrie Latet


I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward. ~John Mortimer


So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health. ~A.J. Reb Materi, Our Family


Nothing is more fatal to Health, than an over Care of it. ~Benjamin Franklin


The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not. ~Mark Twain