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Having resolved to take seriously Paul's assignment to come up with a definition of health AND taking seriously Martin's statement that there is SOMETHING out there that we all think off when we think of health (mental and otherwise), I have compiled a long list of quotes about health. Maybe in this disjointed and contradictory list, we can find the building blocks of a definition; or perhaps just a good laugh.

Defining Mental Health:
"A desire to be in charge of our own lives, a need for control, is born in each of us. It is essential to our mental health, and our success, that we take control."

Robert F. Bennett

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"
Benjamin Franklin
"Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning."
Thomas Jefferson quotes
Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.
Eckhart Tolle
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Krishnamurti

"To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life."
William Londen quotes
"Every human being is the author of his own health or disease."
Buddha
"To wish to be well is a part of becoming well."
Senaca

"A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time - pills or stairs."

Joan Welsh quotes

"Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the body"

De Saint-Real quotes

"The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers"

-Carl Gustav Jung quotes

"Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society."

-Thomas Jefferson quotes

"The best preservative to keep the mind on health is the faithful admonition of a friend."

-Francis Bacon, Sr.

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. ~World Health Organization, 1948

The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing. - Larry Dossey

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. - Redd Foxx

As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body. ~Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail, 1979

In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired. ~Author Unknown

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they'll ease
Your will they'll mend
And charge you not a shilling.
~Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. ~Mark Twain

The... patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop. ~Quentin Regestein

Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body. ~Cicero

To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness. ~Henri Frederic Amiel

Fresh air impoverishes the doctor. ~Danish Proverb

The I in illness is isolation, and the crucial letters in wellness are we. ~Author unknown, as quoted in Mimi Guarneri, The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing

In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else. ~Alison Rose Levy, "An Ancient Cure for Modern Life," Yoga Journal, Jan/Feb 2002

My own prescription for health is less paperwork and more running barefoot through the grass. ~Leslie Grimutter

In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible. ~Cicero

Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open. ~B.K.S. Iyengar

Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws. ~Charles Simmons

A healthy body and soul come from an unencumbered mind and body. ~Ymber Delecto

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies. ~Leo Tolstoy

Disease is somatic; the suffering from it, psychic. ~Martin H. Fischer

An imaginary ailment is worse than a disease. ~Yiddish Proverb

Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only, but the mind and spirit as well;... and not today's pain or pleasure alone, but the whole being and outlook of a man. ~James H. West

Hear your heart. Heart your health. ~Faith Seehill

From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health. ~Catalan Proverb

If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

An illness of the mind is an illness of the body, and vice versa. ~Madrianne Arvore

Just because you're not sick doesn't mean you're healthy. ~Author Unknown

When an illness knocks you on your ass, you should stay down and relax for a while before trying to get back up. ~Candea Core-Starke

The part can never be well unless the whole is well. ~Plato

The scientific truth may be put quite briefly; eat moderately, having an ordinary mixed diet, and don't worry. ~Robert Hutchison, 1932

To avoid sickness eat less; to prolong life worry less. ~Chu Hui Weng

The mind has great influence over the body, and maladies often have their origin there. ~Moliere

Live in rooms full of light
Avoid heavy food
Be moderate in the drinking of wine
Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics
Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water
Change surroundings and take long journeys
Strictly avoid frightening ideas
Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements
Listen to music.
~A. Cornelius Celsus

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. ~Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1977

Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them. ~Martin H. Fischer

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man's self to himself! ~Charles Lamb,Last Essays of Elia

A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer. ~Clement Freud, The Observer, 27 December 1964

If you do everything you should do, and do not do anything you should not do, you will, according to the best available statistics, live exactly eighteen hours longer than you would otherwise. ~Logain Clendening

May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer! or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after! ~Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1749

It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like. ~Jackie Mason

Health is merely the slowest way someone can die. ~Author Unknown