Health Quote by Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

Beauty and health aren’t presented here as gifts you either have or lose by bad luck; they’re treated like wary houseguests. Temple’s sly move is to shift the moral weight from time, fate, and “natural decline” onto the self - not in a bootstrapsy, cheery way, but as a quiet warning about sabotage. The line “unless you destroy them yourself” is blunt enough, yet the more interesting clause is “discourage them to stay with you.” That personification does real work: it suggests these qualities are responsive, almost relational. Treat them badly and they don’t just break; they leave.

The intent feels pastoral and corrective, aimed at people tempted to spend their bodies like disposable currency. “Using them ill” reads less like one reckless night and more like a pattern: vanity that curdles into neglect, pleasure that becomes punishment, pride that turns the body into a prop. It’s an early-modern version of a very contemporary argument: the self isn’t merely something you inhabit, it’s something you manage - and mismanage.

Contextually, Temple sits in a moral tradition that prized moderation and self-governance, where physical condition was linked to character. There’s also a subtle class-coded edge: the people with “beauty and health” to keep are often the ones with the means to protect them, yet Temple still frames loss as self-inflicted. That tension is the subtext: personal responsibility as both wisdom and accusation.