Lapham’s Quarterly

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

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

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

Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.

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

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.

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

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

The body says what words cannot.

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

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.

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

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

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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

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

Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!