Exercise quotes
3.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside exercise — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The voters selected us, in short, because they had confidence in our judgement and our ability to exercise that judgement from a position where we could determine what were their own best interest, as a part of the nation's interest."
"The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time."
"Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble."
"I have a half an hour warm-up I do that my voice teacher gave me. I exercise at least for an hour during the day. I don't have any superstitious rituals or anything like that."
"Art originates in play - in improvisation, experiment, and fantasy; it remains forever, in its deepest instincts, playful and spontaneous, an exercise of the imagination analogous to the exercising of the physical body to no purpose other than ecstatic release."
"Part of the reason I thought that I might do a series is, my dad has pretty much been on the same road to work for years and years. And it's like, "Could I do something like that? Am I so independent that I can't punch the clock at the same place?" So part of it was a kind of exercise. "Can I be responsible in this way?" And lo and behold, I could. Luckily. It'd be bad if I couldn't."
"We're not in control [of circumstances], but that does not mean we don't exercise a certain kind of conditioned agency. That's what it means to live in a community. That's what it means to live in society."
"A cultivated mind is one to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties."
"Education makes a man a more intelligent shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching him how to make shoes; it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and the habits it impresses."
"In many ways spiritual exercise is like physical exercise. If you stop exercising physically, your body may not show the results of inactivity for a while. But one day you wake up and find everything is sagging in all the wrong places."
"By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell."
"At the back of my mind there is always a fear the depression could return but I do all the right things. I try to get the right amount of sleep because I know that I need sleep to function and I need to eat properly and to do some exercising."
"That consciousness of quality, and the need to demand it can galvanize your energies, not just in your work, but in a rigorous exercise of mind and heart in every aspect of your life."
"Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them."
"The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired."
"The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up."
"We should not be content to say that power has a need for such-and-such a discovery, such-and-such a form of knowledge, but we should add that the exercise of power itself creates and causes to emerge new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of information. ... The exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power. ... It is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, it is impossible for knowledge not to engender power."
"One thing that I've learned from male role models is that they don't hesitate to invest in themselves, with the view that, if I'm healthy and happy, I'm going to be a better support to my spouse and children. And I've found that to be the case: Once my kids were settled, the next thing I did was take care of my own health and sanity. And made sure that I was exercising and felt good about myself. I'd bring that energy to everything else that I did, the career, relationship, on and on and on."
"I've always been a closet jock. With exercising, the more you do it, the more you get into it. And the more you see results, the more you're pushing for the next level."
"When I was younger, I could eat whatever I wanted, as long as I exercised; or if I didn't exercise and just watched what I ate, I'd maintain. Now I have to do both."
