Vitality quotes
149 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one."
"For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured."
"To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality."
"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."
"The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have."
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside vitality — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Vitality! That's the pursuit of life, isn't it?"
"The activity of the child has always been looked upon as an expression of his vitality."
"Enthusiasm is that ingredient of vitality mixed with a firm belief in what you are doing that ensures the success of any project you undertake."
"Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
"Of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. . . . Vitality never "takes." You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or a baritone voice."
"You're spending your life without renewing it. You've got to be amused, properly healthily amused. You're spending your vitality without making any. Can't go on you know. Depression! Avoid depression!"
"Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God."
"Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art."
"We derive our vitality from our store of madness."
"The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real."
"You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure."
"Our vitality, and the vitality of each nation, rests on the sincerity and depth of the faith in the ideas which it announces, or pronounces."
"Where there had been only fearful emptiness or equally frightening grandiose fantasies, an unexpected wealth of vitality is now discovered. This is not a homecoming, since this home has never before existed. It is the creation of home."
"Tradition: how the vitality of the past enriches the life of the present."
"The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers."
"but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering."
"It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open."
"Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist-a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist-only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression."
"Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious."
"I feel sorry for the man who has never known the bracing thrill of taking a stand and sticking to it fearlessly. Moral courage has rewards that timidity can never imagine. Like a shot of adrenaline, it floods the spirit with vitality."
