"It is exercise alone that supports the spirit,
and keeps the mind in vigor."
- Cicero, 65 BCE
"So many older people, they just sit around all day long and they don't get any exercise. Their muscles atrophy, and they lose their strength, their energy and vitality by inactivity."
"The easiest way to preserve health and with
greater profit than all other measures put together is to exercise well."
- Cristobal Mendez, Exercise Book, 1553
"Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation; even so does
inaction sap the vigor of the mind."
-
Leonardo da Vinci
"Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over."
Fingers, Hands, Touching, Feeling, Somatics, Haptics: Quotations, Bibliography, Notes
“The inner fire is the most
important thing mankind possesses.”
- Edith Södergran
"Vigor (viriya) is the state of a hero (vira).
Its characteristic is exertion. Its function is to support or consolidate
related mental qualities. It is manifested as non-collapse. Because of the
saying, "Stirred, one strives wisely," its proximate cause is what stirs the
heart. When initiated properly, it should be seen as the root of all
attainments."
- Visuddhimagga XIV, 137, A Buddhist Scripture
"To resist the frigidity of old age, one must combine the body, the mind, and the
heart. And to keep these in parallel vigor one must exercise, study, and love."
-
Alan Bleasdale
"What is the power of vigor? Here, monks, a practitioner lives
with energy set upon the abandoning of everything unwholesome
and the acquiring of everything wholesome; one is steadfast and
strong in effort, not shirking one's task in regard to wholesome
qualities."
- Anguttara Nikaya V.92,
A Buddhist Scripture
“Do stuff. Be clenched,
curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead.
Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is
vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager.
Stay eager.”
- Susan Sontag
“A strong life force can be seen
in physical vitality, courage, competent judgment, self-mastery, sexual vigor,
and the realization of each person’s unique talents and purpose in life.
To maintain a powerful life force, forget yourself, forget about living and
dying, and bring your full attention into this moment.”
- H.E. Davey, Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation
"The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor."
-
Christian Nestell Bovee
Exuberance: The Passion for Life
"The practitioner who delights in vigilance
And fears negligence
Advances like a fire,
Burning fetters subtle and gross."
-
Dhammapada 31, A Buddhist Scripture
"The study of motivation goes back to the
Greeks. Their sports were essential to their education. They saw in
sports the integration of body, mind and soul, the creation of beauty, the
mastering of athletics, and the challenge of competition. A French
sociologist points this out. "Sports," he wrote, was part of the education
of the citizen. He was expected to engage in exercise for a whole series
of reasons that had to do with the shaping of the citizen; the relation between
moral good and physical good; and the growth of a person."
- George Sheehan, M.S., Personal Best, 1989, p 29
“To banish imperfection is
to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.”
- John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
"To be fond of learning is
near to wisdom; to practice with vigor is near to benevolence; and to be
conscious of shame is near to fortitude."
- Confucius
“I watched bulls bred to cows,
watched mares foal, I saw life come from the egg and the multiplicative wonders
of mudholes and ponds, the jell and slime of life shimmering in gravid
expectation. Everywhere I looked, life sprang from something not life, insects
unfolded from sacs on the surface of still waters and were instantly on prowl
for their dinner, everything that came into being knew at once what to do and
did it, unastonished that it was what it was, unimpressed by where it was, the
great earth heaving up bloodied newborns from every pore, every cell, bearing
the variousness of itself from every conceivable substance which it contained in
itself, sprouting life that flew or waved in the wind or blew from the mountains
or stuck to the damp black underside of rocks, or swam or suckled or bellowed or
silently separated in two.”
- E.L. Doctorow, Lives of the Poets: A Novella and Six Stories
Forward Bending (Uttanasana) for Vitality with John Friend
"The chief condition on which,
life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism
develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its
destiny."
- Pierre Joseph Proudhon
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is
translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in
all time, this expression is unique."
-
Martha Graham
Nine
Essentials for Lifelong Vitality
"1. Moving with Attention, Wake Up to Life, Mindful Movements
2. The Learning Switch, Bring in the New, Lifelong learning, Retraining
3. Subtlety, Experience the Power of Gentleness
4. Variation, Enjoy Abundant Possibilities
5. Taking Your Time, Slowing Down, Not Rushing, Luxuriate in the Richness of
Feeling
6. Enthusiasm, Turn the Small into the Great
7. Flexible Goals, Make the Impossible Possible
8. Imagination and Dreams, Create Your Life
9. Awareness, Cultivating Mindfulness, Thrive with True Knowledge"
By Anat Baniel. New York, Harmony Books, 2009. Index, bibliography, 306
pages. ISBN: 9780307395290. VSCL. 
"Better than one hundred years lived
Lazy and lacking in vigor
Is one day lived
With vigor and exertion.
-
Dhammapada 108, A Buddhist Scripture
"The supreme good of life is vitality. And vitality is always seeping away."
Buddhism
Compiled by Mike Garofalo
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This webpage was last modified or updated on March 9, 2013.
This webpage was first published on the Internet in July, 2012.
Green Way Research, Red Bluff, California