Topic
Health in this collection is a subject on which the ancients and the folk proverb tradition agree more than on almost anything else. The apple-a-day proverb, early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise, health-is-better-than-wealth — these are the bedrock. Rousseau links happiness to a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion, which makes the philosophical life sound practical and the practical life sound philosophical. Twain's health-books-may-kill-you-by-misprint extends his standard position on advice: the information available about living well is often more dangerous than the condition it treats. Twain's smoking entry — the easiest thing to give up, as he has done it thousands of times — is the most widely recognized observation on addiction available in aphorism form. What the collection collectively argues is that health is not only physical but relational — the conditions of a good life include friendship, pleasure, purpose, and the wisdom to know that worrying too much about health is itself a kind of illness.
Love labour: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayst for physic.
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity, that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble.