Echoes

Even when your spirit is calm do not let your body relax, and when your body is relaxed do not let your spirit slacken. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit.

Those who are slaves to their appetites cannot preserve their reason, their memory, or their senses in their full vigour; for a full belly does not produce a fine mind.

If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong. The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is best. A horse gives but a kind of half exercise, and a carriage is no better than a cradle.

As long as a person exercises, exerts himself greatly, does not eat to the point of being overly full, and keeps his bowels soft, illness will not come upon him and his strength will increase.

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

One should not eat unless one is hungry, nor drink unless one is thirsty.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

A person should not eat until his stomach is full. Rather, he should eat until he has consumed approximately three quarters of his fill.

The body is a sacred garment. It is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honour, and with joy and with fear as well.

The mind must be given relaxation — it will rise improved and sharper after a good rest. Just as we must not force fertile farmland, for uninterrupted productivity will soon exhaust it, so constant effort will sap our mental vigor.

The stomach is not to be loaded, for there is nothing so hostile to thought as a full belly.

An immoderate diet is unhealthy, but a temperate one preserves strength.

Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided.

There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other precepts depend.

The food which a temperate man leaves upon his plate is more beneficial than that which a glutton eats.

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

I eat only what is enough to sustain my life. My food is bread, soup, an egg, and a little meat. And the amount I eat is no more than my body can easily digest.

What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as to live with 'day-tight compartments' as the most certain way to ensure safety on the voyage. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the dead yesterdays and the unborn to-morrows.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.

Anyone who lives a sedentary life and does not exercise, even if he eats good foods and takes care of himself according to proper medical principles — all his days will be painful ones and his strength shall wane.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.