Lapham’s Quarterly

O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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

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

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

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

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

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

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

Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.

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

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

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

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

The body says what words cannot.

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

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

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

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