To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1949Quotes
The enlightened man says: I am body entirely and nothing beside.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
—Walt Whitman, 1855To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
—George Eliot, 1872Your 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, 1890The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit has made permanent.
—Marcel Proust, 1919If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.
—Samuel Beckett, 1951If I see something sagging, dragging, or bagging, I’m going to go have the stuff tucked or plucked.
—Dolly Parton, 2003Very shy people don’t even want to take up the space that their body actually takes up.
—Andy Warhol, 1975It hurts to watch the fluency of a body acclimated to its shackling.
—Leslie Jamison, 2014Carnal 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. 64