exercise quotes

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel: they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, preciselyas men would suffer†it is thoughtless to condem them, or laugh at them, if they seek to domorethancustomhas pronounced necessary for their sex.

- Charlotte Bronte« 
  Jane Eyre, ch.12.

Hethat inhisstudieswhollyapplieshimselftolabourand exercise, and neglects meditation, loses his time, and he that only applies himself to meditation, and neglects labour and exercise, only wanders and loses himself.

-'The MasterK'ung' Confucius or K'ung Fu-tse
Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Squashthat's not exercise, it's flagellation.

- Sir Noe«  l Peirce Coward
Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

This wondrous miracle did Love devise, For dancing is love's proper exercise.

- SirJohn Davies
  Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing, stanza18.

I repeat†that all power is a trustthat we are accountable for its exercisethat, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist.

- Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
^7  Vivian Grey, bk.6, ch.10.

Don Francesco was a fisher of men, and of women. He fished ad maiorem Dei gloriam, and for the fun of the thing. It was his way of taking exercise.

- (George) Norman Douglas
  South Wind, ch.2.

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work, for man to mend.

-John Dryden
  Epistle,'To my honoured kinsman  John Driden', l.92^5.

   Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick, you shouldn't take it.

- Henry Ford
Attributed. US businessman, grandson of Henry Ford, president of the Ford Motor  Co  from 1945  and  chairman  from 1960.  He  introduced many modernizing measures.

Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.

- Robert M Hutchins
Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.

- Henry James
  'The  Art of Fiction', collected in Partial Portraits (1988).

For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.

- Ben Jonson
Timber: or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (published 1640).

Uberhaupt ist es fu«  r den Forscher ein guter Morgensport, t a« glich vor dem Fru«  hstu«  ck eine Lieblingshypothese einzustampfendas erh a« lt jung. It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

- Konrad Lorenz
  Das sogenannte Bo«  se ('The So-Called Evil', translated by Marjorie Latzke as On  Aggression,1966), ch.2.

It asks more steadiness, self-control, ay, and manly courage, than any other exercise.You must take as well as giveeye to eye, toe to toe, and arm to arm.

- Sir Robert Peel
Of boxing. Quoted inJohn Boyle O'Reilly Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport (1888).

To curle on the ice, does greatly please, Being a manly Scottish exercise; It clears the Brains, stirs up the Native Heat, And gives a gallant appetite for Meat.

- DrAlex Penecuik
  Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Exercise? I get it on the golf course.When I see my friends collapse, I run for the paramedics.

- Red (Richard) Skelton
Attributed.

The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention. He generally becomes asstupidand ignorant asit ispossible for a human creature to become.

- Adam Smith
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.5, ch.1, pt.3, article 2.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

- Gertrude Stein
  In theTatler, no.147,18 Mar. Also attributed toAddison.

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; The Princess For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

-Tennyson
  In Memoriam A.H.H., canto 5, l.1^8.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome.

- Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

It isthespirit of theageto believethat any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

- Gore originally Eugene Luther Vidal,Jr Vidal
  'French Letters:Theories of the New Novel', in Encounter, Dec.

The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.

- Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
Quoted in Alvin Redman The Epigrams of OscarWilde (1952).

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in love! Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

-William Wordsworth
  'The French Revolution as it appeared to enthusiasts at its commencement', l.1^5 (published in The Friend, 26 Oct.1809).