Samuel Johnson Exercise Quotations

To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise...Let him take a course of chemistry, or a course of rope-dance, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.

Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

[W]ith an unquiet mind, neither exercise, nor diet, nor physick can be of much use.

1. Turn all care out of your head as soon as you mount the chaise. 2. Do not think about frugality: your health is worth more than it can cost. 3. Do not continue any day's journey to fatigue. 4. Take now and then a day's rest. 5. Get a smart seasickness if you can. 6. Cast away all anxiety, and keep your mind easy. This last direction is the principal; with an unquiet mind neither exercise, nor diet, nor physic can be of much use.

Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.

The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.

The duties of religion, sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest and to exercise the highest understanding.

None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.