Lapham’s Quarterly

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

Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.

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

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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

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

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

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

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

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

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

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.

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

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

O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!

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

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

The body says what words cannot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.