Archive

Quotes

The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

If I see something sagging, dragging, or bagging, I’m going to go have the stuff tucked or plucked.

—Dolly Parton, 2003

I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.

—Phyllis Diller, 1981

It hurts to watch the fluency of a body acclimated to its shackling.

—Leslie Jamison, 2014

Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1910

There is only one antidote to mental suffering and that is physical pain.

—Karl Marx, 1860

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

—Oscar Wilde, 1890

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

—Willem de Kooning, 1949

One’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

The body says what words cannot.

—Martha Graham, 1985

What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?

—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64

The world is made of the very stuff of the body.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

—Walt Whitman, 1855