Archive

Quotes

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

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

—Walt Whitman, 1855

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

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

—Dolly Parton, 2003

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

—Willem de Kooning, 1949

Shame on the soul, to falter on the road of life while the body still perseveres.

—Marcus Aurelius, c. 170

Your body is the church where nature asks to be reverenced.

—Marquis de Sade, 1797

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

—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64

My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.

—W.H. Auden, c. 1967

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

—Phyllis Diller, 1981

O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!

—William Shakespeare, c. 1596

To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.

—George Eliot, 1872

As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.

—Chinua Achebe, 1958