Bernarr Macfadden Quotes

“If you feed a cold, as often done, you frequently have to starve a fever.”

“Some women are wonderful and some of them are she-devils. Well, what are you going to do? You can't do with them, you can't do without them.”

“Weakness is a crime. Don't be a criminal!”

“Disease has not come upon you because you have been attacked by a germ of some kind, it has not come because you have breathed some extraordinary microbe.

It has appeared because you are ready for it, in most cases because you have deserved it as a penalty for violating Nature’s health laws.”

“Mentally superior children are born of physically superior people.”

“Appetite will always come where death is not inevitable, no less in the ordinary conditions of low health than in cases of acute sickness, and fasting is the swiftest, the most effectual and the most unfailing of all devices ever conceived for inviting natural hunger. Keen hunger, hunger only, makes known the individual need.”

“I can have no doubt that feeding during illness when no hunger exists is a disease-prolonging agency.”

“Regulate the quality of your meals and let the quantity take care of itself, is a far more sensible rule.

Wholesome food rarely tempts us to indulge to excess. We do not often hear of milk topers or baked-apple gluttons.”

“The effect of a fasting cure depends often upon its length, and upon no other point of an admittedly important problem the impressions of the general public are more contradictory and vague.”

“The strongest temperance argument I ever heard was the incidental remark of a lecturing naturalist, that it would be easy to name a thousand different animals that subsist on a thousand different kinds of food, but that they all drink water.”

“A shoe should fit the foot. The more nearly you approximate the same freedom when walking in a shoe as you do when barefooted the more perfect the shoe.”

“Avoid too much variety at one meal.”

“Civilized men and women spend such a very large part of the time in a sitting position that the bodily posture when sitting down is a very great factor in the bodily welfare and health.

Special thought and study, therefore, should be given the question of the sitting posture.”

“Do not acquire the idea that the bowels must move at a certain time each day with unintermitted regularity… it is of advantage to have the bowels move of their own accord, as the result of a natural impulse.”

“Fasting is the greatest of all methods of purification… The free drinking of water and especially the hot-water-drinking plan, together with the colon-flushing treatment, will likewise help to facilitate the cleansing and blood-purifying action of the fast.”

“I am convinced that the Omnipotent Creator knew his business thoroughly when he created the human foot, that the sole of the human foot, heel included, was made for locomotion, and that it is impossible for human ingenuity to improve upon the foot.”

“If one could maintain his blood in absolute purity disease would be virtually impossible.”

“In early English history condemned criminals were put to death by being deprived of sleep, and the same method has been employed in China.

Enforced sleeplessness, in fact, has been used as a form of torture by the Chinese, being more feared than any other. The men subjected to this frightful ordeal always die raving maniacs.”

“It has been found that dogs kept awake even though sufficiently fed, suffer more than when deprived of food and permitted to sleep. When kept awake continuously they die in four or five days.”

“It is reasonable to conclude that an hour of sleep before midnight is worth more than an hour thereafter.”

“Make your mind a blank so far as the past is concerned, and fill it with uplifting thoughts for the present and the future.

Worry is a mental poison, the toxic element produced in the mind by retention of waste matter.”

“Many movements which assist in the development of the neck muscles also serve to stimulate the activities of the thyroid gland.”

“More happiness comes from the pursuit of wealth or pleasure than from its actual attainment.”

“Nearly all restrictive diets are valuable for a short period where there is evidence of overeating.”

“Now these dead cells and minute corpuscles linger in the tissues if one lives an inactive life. Therefore it is literally true that you are half dead if you do not give the muscular system its proper use.”

“One may say that magnetism and all the desirable qualities that draw others to us are closely associated with the supreme development of the forces of life. No vivacity, then no personality.”

“Remember also the importance of a suitable mental attitude at meal-time. Your mind should be occupied almost entirely with the pleasure of the meal itself. You should not be seriously diverted in any way.”

“Remember, however, that modern habits are often inclined partially to eliminate or entirely to destroy what one might call a natural thirst.”

“Sleep is far more necessary than food.”

“The “laugh cure” is a reality, for it is a remedy of very great value. Each day should have its laughing time, or its many laughing times.”