Quality of life

“ Help us to grow stronger and nobler by this world's varying good and ill, and while we enlarge the quantity of our being by continual life, may we improve its kind and quality not less, and become fairer, and tenderer, and heavenlier too, as we leave behind us the various events of our mortal life. ”

“ What we need is a better quality of mental product, more capacity to penetrate into the heart and substance of experience, greater responsiveness to good influences, greater ability to judge values, and a more plastic and more freely flowing mental life. ”

“ All these experiences, if they are guided by prudence and self-control, bring their meed of insight and skill and character. It is only through living that we grow, and health means the potentiality of life. ”

“ According to the physical sanction, if you live a temperate life, you will be healthy. You will have the physical reward of your moral goodness. Health is almost essential to success. Hence, if you would be successful, live a good life. ”

“ First, a healthy body; second, an active mind in sympathy with the past, the present, and the future; thirdly, occupation fit for a healthy body and an active mind; and fourthly, a beautiful world to live in.
These are the conditions of life which the refined man of all ages has set before him as the thing above all others to be attained. ”

“ But the one who chooses the policy of getting all the health he can and keeping all he gets, will have a very different tale to tell. Regular habits, careful living, sunny disposition, a clear head, a bright eye, a sound mind and a sound body give one a cheerful outlook on the world, enable one to use all his energies to the best advantage, guarantee that he will have real friends, assure happiness, and make of one a genuine success in life, whether with or without the prosperity that is very likely to accompany such qualities. ”

“ Then, again, I have found a fund of goodness in nature and in society. Thanks to the remarkable good luck which has attended me all my life, and always thrown me into communication with very worthy men, I have never had to make sudden changes in my attitudes. Thanks, also, to an almost unchangeable good temper, the result of moral healthiness, which is itself the result of a well-balanced mind, and of tolerably good bodily health, I have been able to indulge in a quiet philosophy, which finds expression either in grateful optimism or playful irony. ”

“ I have preached upon this—that to each individual man, woman and child, there comes—there must and will come a time, when material success, health, wealth and happiness are non-important, and when moral issues, when duty, character and conduct are the great essential facts of life to be met and grappled with. ”

“ And look at our people! Did you ever see more perfect specimens of all that is graceful and healthy in humanity? No deformities, no diseases, no incapacity for work or for fulfilling all the obligations of life; the highest intellectual development in the most perfect physical frames. ”

“ But if by due care and thought of self, by reasonable enjoyment of the bright and pleasant things which life brings to most, I in some degree or wholly counterpoise such pains and sorrows as life brings to all, and at the same time help to brighten the lives of those around, and those also of generations as yet unborn, how shall I doubt what answer to give to the question. Is life worth living? Not sad is the answer, but bright and cheering.
There is still not a little to be said respecting the due care of personal well-being. ”

“ But imagine my astonishment when his first question was, ‘Do you believe life is worth living?’ asked in an earnest but calm manner. I confess this question from lips so young alarmed me and went to my heart like a thrust. ‘Why, certainly,’ was my reply, ‘life is worth living, and living good. How do you come to ask a question that sounds so strange from the lips of a young man? ”

“ It is not enough to ask what is most attractive, what line of life will ensure the greatest material gain or worldly honour? Rather should we ask, Where shall I be safest from moral danger, and, above all, in what position of life, open to me, can I do the most good? ”

“ Thus we meet with a fundamental philosophy of life in which it is not the satisfaction of needs, appetites, and desires, but the opposite theory which is thought to lead to welfare. Renounce what you want; do what you do not want to do; pursue what is repugnant ”

“ The results of such knowledge will prove beyond a doubt that the health of the body, as well as of the mind, is of the highest importance for success in life, for happiness and usefulness, and that we can do much to secure both. ”

“ In this baffling but wonderful domain I am inspired by the ambitious hope that some, at any rate, of the many unsolved problems of the Science of Life may yet give up their secrets to the demand of my persistency, exerted in the interest of the well-being of humanity. ”

“ Then there is the very important matter of home happiness to be kept in view. Amusements, accomplishments, elegant arts, manners, modes of conduct in society; all these are necessary knowledge. And to crown the whole, those indispensable rules and maxims of moral improvement, which are the foundation of good in the character and life of rational, immortal beings, must be made familiar. ”

“ SIMPLE NEEDS WHEN we buy a bird of the fancier, the good man tells us briefly what is necessary for our new pensioner, and the whole thing—hygiene, food, and the rest—is comprehended in a dozen words. Likewise, to sum up the necessities of most men, a few concise lines would answer. Their régime is in general of supreme simplicity, and so long as they follow it, all is well with them, as with every obedient child of Mother Nature. Let them depart from it, complications arise, health fails, gayety vanishes. Only simple and natural living can keep a body in full vigor. ”

“ What may be meant by this idea of 'fitness'—which meets us in the famous phrase that the 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for life is the goal of evolution—is a question which brings us at once to the consideration of the ethical significance of the theory. ”

“ There is also a {492} disposition in such minds to multiply their troubles as well as magnify them. They make troubles of many things which should really be regarded as privileges, opportunities for self-sacrifice, for culture, for improving effort. They make troubles of the ordinary allotments of life; its duties, charities, changes, unavoidable accidents, reverses, and experiences. This can be considered in no other light than morally wrong, for these common allotments and experiences were, beyond all question, ordained by infinite wisdom as a healthy discipline for the soul of man. ”

“ Therefore, to apply our own knowledge to the restoration or maintenance of life demands that we avoid that which is injurious, and that we joyously, gladly accept that which is helpful.
Life is a sacred gift, a privilege, and an opportunity to be enjoyed, it is to be lifted up, and filled with high experiences. ”

“ Meeting Life's Vital Problems. Every intelligent person is interested in the vital problems of life. How can we best prepare ourselves to meet these problems, understand their significance, and assure ourselves of the greatest possible measure of health, happiness and usefulness?
This is the most important question in every individual's life experience. It is the basic consideration of every well organized family. The attempt to answer it, in some degree of satisfaction, at least, is society's most fundamental constructive aim. ”

“ In the first place, consider that the great object of life to us is not enjoyment, but the formation of a right character; that such a character can not be formed except by discipline, and that the trials and difficulties of domestic life, if met in a proper spirit and manner, will in the end prove blessings rather than evils, by securing a measure of elevation, dignity, patience, self-control, and benevolence, that could be gained by no other methods. ”

“ The range of individual differences in this respect is enormous; but whatever the mixture of yeses and noes may be, the person is infallibly aware when he has struck it in the right proportion for him. This, he feels, is my proper vocation, this is the optimum, the law, the life for me to live. Here I find the degree of equilibrium, safety, calm, and leisure which I need, or here I find the challenge, passion, fight, and hardship without which my soul's energy expires.
Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. ”

“ And this visioned perfect mind is one which adjusts itself without friction to the body, making it fulfil the laws of health that it may help and not hinder mind’s progress; one which adjusts itself to people and things, co-operating with other minds to develop manners and customs and laws of the most satisfactory community living; one which forces things to be servants of its will; one which makes harmony of life by fulfilling the laws of the soul as well as of the intellect and of the body. ”

“ It is this and this only, which can enable us to meet as we should, all the changes and chances of this mortal life—to carry along with us into whatever calling or profession we may choose, all the requisite knowledge, ability and will, to render it most conducive not only to our own subsistence, comfort and happiness, so far as these are dependant thereon, but to the general good of the whole community in which we live. ”

“ One of these suppositions is, that for human happiness health is alone requisite—health in the social organism including sufficient wealth and freedom; and that man's life, whenever it is not interfered with, will be moral, dignified, and delightful naturally, no matter how he lives it. ”

“ The aim of reformers to-day should be to provide for every one neither ease nor comfort, nor high wages nor short hours, but the deeper necessities of a full and contented life, bodies [175] able to respond with satisfaction to the strain of hard work performed under conditions which satisfy the mind in the most fundamental way of all—the deep, sub-conscious satisfaction which is given by the sweet smell of earth, by fresh air and sunshine, and green things around one. ”

“ Or perhaps, with more propriety, I may ask, who could endure life without a purpose, without the pursuit of some object, in the attainment of which his moral energies should be called into healthful activity? ”

“ The life principle, or the central man, is shaken to the innermost depths, sending new tided of life and strength to the surface, thus materially tending to insure good health to persons who indulge therein. ”

“ Yes, the high standard of living we have to set before ourselves, and before the people we ask to join us, is a high standard of working, a high standard of learning and thinking, with a high standard of family life and public spirit. ”

“ But in the concentration of our attention on this altogether desirable end, which we are still far from having adequately attained, we have lost sight of that larger end, the well-being of the race and the amelioration of life itself, not merely of the conditions of life. ”

“ But, although this focalizing power of acting with the whole rather than with a part of the soul, gives independence of many external, conventional, proximate standards of conduct, deepening our interests in life, and securing us against disappointment by defining our expectations, while such a sound and simple will-philosophy is proof against considerable shock and has firmness of texture enough to bear much responsibility, there is, of course, something deeper, without which all our good conduct is more or less hollow. ”

“ It seems in short to be his opinion, that the higher we advance in the social scale, the further we are off from the sanities and truths of human life. He consequently looks for these in ruder and humbler ranks: in the dwellings of the poor, in the hearts of the peasantry, and the intuitions of uncorrupted childhood. ”

“ We must begin to build up the ornamental part of life—its pleasures, bodily and mental, scientific and artistic, social and individual—on the basis of work undertaken willingly and cheerfully, with the consciousness of benefiting ourselves and our neighbours by it. ”

“ They lose sight of the fact that God rules above them, and a thousand influences work around them, partly, at least, beyond their control. They have not determined to accept life cheerfully in whatever form it may come, and seek for good under all circumstances.
{494} We must seek for happiness in heaven-appointed ways, in study, duty, labor, exalted pleasures, with a constant effort to find it. We must seek it in domestic and business life, in the relations we hold to our fellow-men, and in the daily opportunities afforded us for discipline and self-sacrifice. ”

“ Recognizing that health of mind and body is one of the most valuable of all personal assets, make every reasonable effort to maintain intact, and, if possible, increase the capital of physical and mental strength. ”

“ His suggestion is simply this—that moral qualities are selected in the struggle for existence in much the same way as purely physical or animal excellences are selected, that is, by their contributing to the continued and more efficient life of the organism. ”

“ What material things does a man need to live under the best conditions? A healthful diet, simple clothing, a sanitary dwelling-place, air and exercise. I am not going to enter into hygienic details, [69] compose menus, or discuss model tenements and dress reform. My aim is to point out a direction and tell what advantage would come to each of us from ordering his life in a spirit of simplicity. To know that this spirit does not rule in our society we need but watch the lives of men of all classes. Ask different people, of very unlike surroundings, this question: What do you need to live? ”

“ Bodily health is the foundation of personal morality; to act at all there must be physical energy available; and, other things equal, the man with the greatest store of vitality will live the happiest and most useful life. Christianity has too often forgotten this fundamental truth, which needs emphasis at the very outset of our concrete studies in morality.
What is the moral importance of health?
(1) Health is in itself a great contribution to the intrinsic worth of life. ”