Lapham’s Quarterly

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

The body says what words cannot.

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

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

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

All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.

To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.

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

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

O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!

There is only one antidote to mental suffering and that is physical pain.

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

The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit has made permanent.

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

Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.

Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

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

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

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.

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

One’s body, hair, and skin are a gift from one’s parents—do not dare to allow them to be harmed.

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

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

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

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

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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

Every tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.

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

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