The Physical Basis of Character
"Health is the vital principle of bliss."—Thompson.
"Good nature is often a mere matter of health. With good digestion men are apt to be good natured; with bad digestion, morose."—Beecher.
"A man so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with equal ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of,—whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic-engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order, ready like a steam engine to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind."—Huxley.
"Finally, I have one advice which is of very great importance. You are to consider that health is a thing to be attended to continually, as the very highest of all temporal things. There is no kind of an achievement equal to perfect health. What to it are nuggets or millions?"—Carlyle's Address to Students at Edinburgh.
"Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty:
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood:
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty but kindly."
—"As You Like It," ii: 3.