What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.

If it weren’t for painting, I wouldn’t live; I couldn’t bear the extra strain of things.

I won’t touch on risky, because that’s subjective. People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

I’ll never graduate from collagen.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

Sometimes, women in families put themselves last until it manifests itself in their own health.

My rule is to break one sweat a day.

We have soon to have everywhere smoke annihilators, dust absorbers, ozonizers, sterilizers of water, air, food and clothing, and accident preventers on streets, elevated roads and in subways. It will become next to impossible to contract disease germs or get hurt in the city, and country folk will got to town to rest and get well.

The remedy is worse than the disease.

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Living indoors without fresh air quickly poisons the blood and makes people feel tired and seedy when they don’t know why. For myself, I sleep out of doors in winter as well as summer. I only feel tired or seedy when I have been indoors a lot. I only catch cold when I sleep in a room.

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

Prospering just doesn’t have to do with money.

Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes at night.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

Be a force of love as often as you can and turn away negative thoughts whenever you feel them surface.

It’s so important to realize that every time you get upset, it drains your emotional energy. Losing your cool makes you tired. Getting angry a lot messes with your health.

The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we’ve always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don’t know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.

If you spend your life competing with business men, what do you have? A bank account and ulcers!

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

Mind over mattress.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

It’s simple, if it jiggles, it’s fat.

I want to be relaxed in my personal life. I really don’t like to be hassled.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.

I worked out a lot before I was 20. I was hard underneath. I had just a little padding. I was quilted. Always Chanel.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

I take my sleep very, very important.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

The soul is healed by being with children.

When I was 25 and I was told to eat 6 pieces of potato every day, someday it would be 8, someday it would be 10. Not that it’s going to make a big difference. But now when I am told by my nutritionist that you get to eat 6 pieces a day, it’s 6. Done!

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.