It hurts to watch the fluency of a body acclimated to its shackling.
—Leslie Jamison, 2014Quotes
Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1910And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
—Walt Whitman, 1855The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.
—Anaïs Nin, 1935Your body is the church where nature asks to be reverenced.
—Marquis de Sade, 1797As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
—Chinua Achebe, 1958All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978One’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 BCMy face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1967Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.
—Willem de Kooning, 1949I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.
—Phyllis Diller, 1981Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64