Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton

Idleness is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally active; and if it be not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or sinks into melancholy.

Body | Business | Cause | Devil | Idleness | Melancholy | Mind | Wisdom |

Marion LeRoy Burton

Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities and the fountain of all our diseases. As a lamp is choked by a superabundance of oil, and a fire extinguished by excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet.

Body | Diet | Excess | Gluttony | Health | Wisdom |

George Barrell Cheever

For health and the constant enjoyment of life, give me a keen and ever present sense of humor; it is the next best thing to an abiding faith in providence.

Enjoyment | Faith | Health | Humor | Life | Life | Present | Providence | Sense | Wisdom |

Geoffrey Chaucer

And all your dreams and other such like folly, to deep oblivion let them be consigned; for they arise but from your melancholy, by which your health is being undermined. A straw for all the meaning you can find in dreams! They aren’t worth a hill of beans, for no one knows what dreaming really means.

Dreams | Folly | Health | Meaning | Means | Melancholy | Oblivion | Wisdom | Worth |

Anne Conway

In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.

Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |

Thomas Dekker

Gold that buys health can never be ill-spent.

Gold | Health | Wisdom |

Daisie Adelle Davis

Nutrition is a young subject; it has been kicked around like a puppy that cannot take care of itself. food faddists and crackpots have kicked it pretty cruelly... They seem to believe that unless food tastes like Socratic hemlock, it cannot build health. Frankly, I often wonder what such persons plan to do with good health in case they acquire it.

Care | Good | Health | Plan | Wisdom | Wonder |

John Crowne

War destroys man, but luxury destroys mankind; at once corrupts the body and the mind.

Body | Luxury | Man | Mankind | Mind | War | Wisdom |

Orville Dewey

We never seem to know what anything means till we have lost it. The full significance of those words, property, ease, health - the wealth of meaning that lies in the fond epithets, parent, child friend, we never know till they are taken away; till in place of the bright, visible being, comes the awful and desolate shadow where nothing is - where we stretch our hands in vain, ands strain our eyes upon dark and dismal vacuity.

Friend | Health | Meaning | Means | Nothing | Property | Wealth | Wisdom | Words | Child |

Tyron Edwards

Bad books are like intoxicating drinks; they furnish neither nourishment, nor medicine. Both improperly excite; the one the mind; the other by body. The desire for each increases by being fed. Both ruin; one the intellect; the other the health; and together, the soul. The safeguard against each is the same - total abstinence from all that intoxicates either body or mind.

Abstinence | Body | Books | Desire | Health | Mind | Soul | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.

Body | Life | Life | Luxury | Mind | Possessions | Success | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

Temperance is to the body what religion is to the soul, the foundation and source of health and strength and peace.

Body | Health | Peace | Religion | Soul | Strength | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

Duty performed is a moral tonic; if neglected, the tone and strength of both mind and heart are weakened, and the spiritual health undermined.

Duty | Health | Heart | Mind | Strength | Wisdom |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Hatred is like fire - it makes even light rubbish deadly.

Light | Wisdom |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders... It is s species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals.

Family | Health | Idleness | Labor | Madness | Man | Men | Risk | Wisdom |

Michel Foucault

I believe that the political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population.

Body | Control | Discipline | Wisdom |

Timothy Flint

Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind, and active habits, I place early rising as a means of health and happiness.

Conscience | Health | Means | Mind | Quiet | Wisdom |

Thomas Erskine, Lord Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

The body travels more easily than the mind, and until we have limbered up our imagination we continue to think as though we had stayed home. We have not really budged a step until we take up residence in someone else's point of view.

Body | Imagination | Mind | Wisdom | Think |

Abraham ben Jacob Gabishon

When the body gets full, the mind gets dull.

Body | Mind | Wisdom |