If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.
—Samuel Beckett, 1951Quotes
Every tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.
—Elizabeth I, 1588Your body is the church where nature asks to be reverenced.
—Marquis de Sade, 1797Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.
—Willem de Kooning, 1949Very shy people don’t even want to take up the space that their body actually takes up.
—Andy Warhol, 1975The body says what words cannot.
—Martha Graham, 1985And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
—Walt Whitman, 1855The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit has made permanent.
—Marcel Proust, 1919To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
—George Eliot, 1872The enlightened man says: I am body entirely and nothing beside.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883