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

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

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

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

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

Fresh air impoverishes the doctor. ~Danish Proverb

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

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. ~Leslie Grimutter

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

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

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

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

Sometimes I get the feeling the aspirin companies are sponsoring my headaches. ~V.L. Allineare

Hear your heart. Heart your health. ~Faith Seehill

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

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

When an illness knocks you on your ass, you should stay down and relax for a while before trying to get back up. ~Candea Core-Starke

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

I see rejection in my skin, worry in my cancers, bitterness and hate in my aching joints. I failed to take care of my mind, and so my body now goes to hospital. ~Astrid Alauda

If you don’t take care of yourself, the undertaker will overtake that responsibility for you. ~Carrie Latet

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

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

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

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

Without health, there is no point. To anything. ~Everett Mámor

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

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

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

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

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

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