“There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.”
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Probable attribution
This saying is widely associated with Mahatma Gandhi, but the attribution is not supported by a reliable primary source.
Likely origin: Appears in 'The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings' (ed. Homer Jack); genuinely from his writings but no dated primary pinned.
About this quote
Worry burns real physical and mental energy on outcomes you can't control, and it rarely changes them. The remedy is trust — in a larger order, or simply in your own capacity to handle what comes — which frees that energy for the present. Anxiety spent in advance buys nothing but exhaustion.
When to use it
- A parent losing sleep over a grown child's choices he can no longer make for them.
- An investor checking the market hourly and gaining nothing but a knot in his stomach.
- A student so anxious about a test that the fear crowds out the actual studying.