I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.
—Phyllis Diller, 1981Quotes
The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, c. 1947One’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 BCThe enlightened man says: I am body entirely and nothing beside.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
—Chinua Achebe, 1958Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.
—Willem de Kooning, 1949It hurts to watch the fluency of a body acclimated to its shackling.
—Leslie Jamison, 2014My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1967What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64The world is made of the very stuff of the body.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.
—Elizabeth I, 1588The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit has made permanent.
—Marcel Proust, 1919Very shy people don’t even want to take up the space that their body actually takes up.
—Andy Warhol, 1975