Meaning:
A change is as good as a rest is a proverb that expresses, in a fairly
straightforward literal way, the notion that a change from one's regular
occupation is as restorative as a holiday.
Background:
`A change is as good as a rest' is a product of the the Victorian era. Many
proverbs from that time encourage the strengthening of moral fibre, effort
and industry. This one is harder to understand the motive for as it is more
of an observation than an exhortation.
The idea expressed in the proverb is first found in the Christian Gleaner and
Domestic Magazine, 1825:
Change of work is as good as play
The currently used wording of the proverb is first found as the title of a
poem that was widely published from 1857 onward. Here's the earliest example
that I know of, from the English newspaper The Hampshire Advertiser, August
1857:
Ye votaries of sofas and beds
Ye sloths who exertion detest,
This maxim I wish to drive into your heads
A change is as good as a rest.
Ye children of Fashion and Wealth,
With countless indulgences blest,
Remember that indolence preyeth on health
A change is as good as a rest.
The poem, which the unkind might call doggerel, goes on in similar vein for
another nine verses - I'm sure you get the gist. The author is unknown.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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A regular marathon exerts the same group of muscles over 26.2 miles of largely
flat pavement. On a trail, however, they take turns up- and down-hill and at any
point one set's working while the other's taking a rest.
In the 2009 bestseller ``Born to Run,'' the Tarahumara Indians showed their
running prowess while having fun. Unlike Hoka-shod Camelbak-vested modern
endurance athletes bent on winning or breaking personal records, the Indians
wore huaraches fashioned from old tires and drank lemon water with chia-seeds
and looked like going a party. They never leaped down or walked up as their
thick-cushioned American mates did. Instead, they baby-stepped daunting steep
terrains, cresting peaks and descending gullies with the ease of an afternoon
jog on a meadow. And they did it for hundreds of miles.
