Quotes About Health

On feeling guilty about lack of 'productivity': In a time of infirmity, the illness IS one's work. Taking care of all the disciplines that our health problems require IS the other part of the small daily fidelity to which we are called, beside the faithfulness of being attentive to God. We can be well simply by our diligence in being who we are at the moment. --Marva Dawn, Being Well When We're Ill pg 137

Our culture is obsessed with physical health and soundness. It advises us to avoid junk food, read labels, shop in whole-food stores, and pay more for organic foods. As a result, many people watch what they eat. But sadly, most are utterly unconcerned about their spiritual consumption. They are unaware that they are ingesting a lot of contaminated, unhealthy ideas.

Cancer is eating away my body, but anger will eat away your soul.

am not strong enough yet to stand much noise or excitement

It was simply because, as a doctor, I don't believe a drug should be taken for anything that is just uncomfortable or self-limiting.

The trouble in our society is that everyone wants drugs that are free from risk and, as you and I both know, they don't exist and never will.

I believe in work. If somebody doesn't create something, however small it may be, he gets sick. An awful lot of people feel that they're treading water -- that if they vanished in smoke, it wouldn't mean anything at all in this world. And that's a despairing and destructive feeling. It'll kill you.

There are certain people, the sicker they get the longer they live.

I'm losing weight, you notice, Pop?

Self-care is never selfish, but it may feel that way when you live a frenzied life.

People who help others on a regular basis are ten times more likely to be healthy than people who do not.

In general, nine-tenths of our happiness depends on our health alone.

What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.

Health so far outweighs all external goods that a healthy beggars is truly more fortunate than a king in poor health.

Health outweighs all other blessings so much that one may really say that a healthy beggar is happier than an ailing king. A quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the enjoyment of a perfectly sound physique, an intellect clear, lively, penetrating and seeing things as they are, a moderate and gentle will, and therefore a good conscience–these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make up for or replace.

For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health

and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care.

If we lived in a less healthist, capitalist, and hierarchical society, which spent less time finding ways to exclude and disenfranchise people and more time finding ways to include and enhance the potentialities of everyone, then there wouldn't have been so much for me to overcome

After I heard that I had had a heart attack, how I lived in my body changed, and my doctor should have found a way to let me know he recognized that.

The ill or impaired may, in the sense of fulfilling life, be far more free than healthy people.

When I was very ill, I watched people out running and loved their capacity for movement, their freedom within their bodies. My hope was that they also valued what they were able to be.

The fact still remains that "to fast" means primarily "not to eat."1

The normal fast, then, involved abstaining from all forms of food, but not from water, and must be distinguished from the other two forms, the absolute fast and the partial fast, which we must now consider.

We have a few examples in Scripture of what we have called the absolute fast, that is, abstaining from drinking as well as eating. Normally this was never for more than three days