Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone; it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities.
Interpretation
Health benefits not only ourselves but also those around us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the idea that sickness is a burden that limits one's ability to help others, as it consumes one's energy and resources. In contrast, good health allows an individual to contribute positively to the community, enabling them to extend their capabilities and generosity beyond their own needs, thereby enriching the lives of others.
In practice
In a speech about community health initiatives, this quote could emphasize the importance of supporting healthy lifestyles.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
I was anorexic in the 60s and 70s, although it wasn't called anorexia then. I thought people would be nicer to me if I looked very small and delicate, so food wasn't high on my agenda. But it is now.
I feel like I've set the example for loving your body no matter what size it is, but I also can set the example for being healthy as well.
We are working towards a shared vision of the future for health among all the world's people. A vision future in which we develop new ways of working together at global and national level. A vision which has poor people and poor communities at its centre. And a vision which focuses action on the causes and consequences of the health conditions that create and perpetuate poverty.
Improvements in global public health must begin locally, and must be driven by leaders who will learn the hard lessons from COVID-19.
We will not solve the addiction problem in America if we don't address social connection.
It is now conceivable that our children's children will know the term cancer only as a constellation of stars.
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