Archive

Quotes

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

—Leslie Jamison, 2014

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

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

—Walt Whitman, 1855

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

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

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

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

—Chinua Achebe, 1958

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

—Marquis de Sade, 1797

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

—George Eliot, 1872

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

—Phyllis Diller, 1981

The body says what words cannot.

—Martha Graham, 1985

O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!

—William Shakespeare, c. 1596

Very shy people don’t even want to take up the space that their body actually takes up.

—Andy Warhol, 1975