What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64
Archive
Quotes
The world is made of the very stuff of the body.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961The body says what words cannot.
—Martha Graham, 1985O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!
—William Shakespeare, c. 1596To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
—George Eliot, 1872Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.
—Willem de Kooning, 1949Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.
—Kate Moss, 2009The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, c. 1947And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
—Walt Whitman, 1855One’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 BCTo lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1949It hurts to watch the fluency of a body acclimated to its shackling.
—Leslie Jamison, 2014