All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978Quotes
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
—Chinua Achebe, 1958My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1967The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, c. 1947Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920The body says what words cannot.
—Martha Graham, 1985To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1949Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef.
—Tom Stoppard, 1993What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64The world is made of the very stuff of the body.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961Every tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605One’s body, hair, and skin are a gift from one’s parents—do not dare to allow them to be harmed.
—Classic of Filial Piety, c. 200 BC