Archive

Quotes

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, c. 1947

The world is made of the very stuff of the body.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

—Walt Whitman, 1855

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

—W.H. Auden, c. 1967

Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef.

—Tom Stoppard, 1993

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

—George Eliot, 1872

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

—Willem de Kooning, 1949

The enlightened man says: I am body entirely and nothing beside.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883

If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.

—Samuel Beckett, 1951

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

—Dolly Parton, 2003

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

—Oscar Wilde, 1890

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

—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64

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

—Andy Warhol, 1975