Quotations about the Body

The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. ~Friedrich Nietzsche


Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live. ~Jim Rohn


Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense. ~Henry Miller


Every man is the builder of a Temple called his body, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. ~Henry David Thoreau


Blood is that fragile scarlet tree we carry within us. ~Osbert Sitwell


The word arse is as much god as the word face. It must be so, otherwise you cut off your god at the waist. ~D.H. Lawrence


To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. ~Buddha


Why should a man's mind have been thrown into such close, sad, sensational, inexplicable relations with such a precarious object as his body? ~Thomas Hardy


How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle? ~Katherine Mansfield, Bliss and Other Stories


Scars are tattoos with better stories. ~From a Toyota advertisement in Sports Illustrated magazine, 3 June 2002


The human body is a machine which winds its own springs. ~Julien Offroy de la Mettrie, L'Homme Machine


Beyond my body my veins are invisible. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Emotion always has its roots in the unconscious and manifests itself in the body. ~Irene Claremont de Castillejo


Man is the sole animal whose nudity offends his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind. ~Montaigne


Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else. ~Samuel Johnson


The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in. ~B.K.S. Iyengar, Yoga: The Path To Holistic Health


'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.
Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners.
~William Shakespeare, Othello


A trembling in the bones may carry a more convincing testimony than the dry documented deductions of the brain. ~Llewelyn Powers


Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs. ~Aldous Huxley


The body never lies. ~Martha Graham


Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents. ~William Osler


Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies. ~Frank Gillette Burgess


What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera. ~Aldous Huxley


The body is but a pair of pincers set over a bellows and a stew pan and the whole fixed upon stilts. ~Samuel Butler, Notebooks


The body too has its rights; and it will have them: they cannot be trampled on without peril. The body ought to be the soul's best friend. Many good men however have neglected to make it such: so it has become a fiend and has plagued them. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827







If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong. ~Thomas Jefferson


Hormones, vitamines, stimulants and depressives are oils upon the creaky machinery of life. Principal item, however, is the machinery. ~Martin H. Fischer


Make your feet your friend. ~J.M. Barrie


The heart is not simply suspended in a body but in a culture, a place, a time. ~Mimi Guarneri, The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing


There is a wisdom in the body that is older and more reliable than clocks and calendars. ~John Harold Johnson


The trouble with having a body is that people know it's where you hang out and you don't get any privacy. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


There is but one temple in this Universe: The Body. We speak to God whenever we lay our hands upon it. ~Thomas Carlyle


Your body is a flower that life let bloom.... ~Ilchi Lee


Your body is a beautiful manifestation powered by spirit. ~Mike Dolan,www.hawaiianlife.com


The Church says: The body is a sin.
Science says: The body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The body says: I am a fiesta.
~Eduardo Galeano


If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Flesh goes on pleasuring us, and humiliating us, right to the end. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Our feet are our body's connection to the earth. ~Andrew Weil


Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet. ~Kabir


Sometimes your body is smarter than you are. ~Author Unknown


[T]he way he treats his body, you’d think he was renting. ~Robert Brault,www.robertbrault.com


If you don't take care of your body, where will you live? ~Author Unknown


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


Yet this is health: To have a body functioning so perfectly that when its few simple needs are met it never calls attention to its own existence. ~Bertha Stuart Dyment


Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart? ~Pablo Casals


A woman is as young as her knees. ~Mary Quant


'Tis better than riches
To scratch when it itches.
~Author Unknown


It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. ~Marcel Proust


The body is not a permanent dwelling, but a sort of inn which is to be left behind when one perceives that one is a burden to the host. ~Seneca


The fact that the mind rules the body is, in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life. ~Franz Alexander


Our body is a machine for living. It is geared towards it; it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself; it will be more effective than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies. ~Leo Tolstoy


What fools indeed we morals are
To lavish care upon a Car,
With ne'er a bit of time to see
About our own machinery!
~John Kendrick Bangs


Sweat your prayers, dance your pain, and move on. ~Gabrielle Roth


Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other. ~Henry David Thoreau


The human body is the only machine for which there are no spare parts. ~Hermann M. Biggs


In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual. ~Bernard Le Bovier de Fontanelle


The body is a bundle of careful compromises. ~Randolph Nesse and George Williams, Why We Get Sick


Massage is the only form of physical pleasure to which nature forgot to attach consequences. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


My soul-bird loves my body-cage
Only when it is kept fit,
Pure and absolutely immaculate.
~Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames


Most guys aren't that picky. They may have quicker reflexes around large breasts, but they need more to keep them interested. We know plenty of women whose sex appeal makes their breasts exactly the right size. ~From "The Playboy Advisor," Playboy magazine, March 2004, in answer to the question, "If you have small breasts, how do you make yourself look sexy? Most guys want girls with large breasts."


The body is a sacred garment. ~Martha Graham


I love the body. Flesh is so honest, and organs do not lie. ~Terri Guillemets


We use our brains too little, and when we do, it is only to make excuses for our reflexes and our instincts. ~Martin H. Fischer


I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me. ~Herman Hesse


Abdicate, v.: to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach. ~Author Unknown


A person who doesn't breathe deeply reduces the life of his body. If he doesn't move freely, he restricts the life of his body. If he doesn't feel fully, he narrows the life of his body. And if his self-expression is constricted, he limits the life of his body. ~Alexander Lowen


Skin is a covering for our immortality. ~Terri Guillemets


The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition. ~W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand


What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed? ~Michelangelo


Most psychologists treat the mind as disembodied, a phenomenon with little or no connection to the physical body. Conversely physicians treat the body with no regard to the mind or the emotions. But the body and mind are not separate, and we cannot treat one without the other. ~Candace Pert


Exercise, play, move. Stretch, feel, reach, sweat. Skip, dance, hug! Use the body God gave you, don't let it rot. ~Terri Guillemets


Let the body receive an injury less than mortal, and what follows? Before the swiftest foot can bring the physician, Nature has begun her healing work. The physician is at best only her humble assistant. Medical science is learning more and more to trust to the vis medicatrix Naturæ—the healing power of Nature. It is she, whom we call stern and merciless, that knits together the broken bone that no artificer on earth could mend. It is she that deftly works out of the system the injurious matter which we in our ignorance have forced upon it. She is not only kind when we obey her: she repairs our mistakes and heals the hurts we have done ourselves. Is not this the very counterpart of what the Divine Physician does for our spirits? ~George S. Merriam


Few of us have lost our minds, but most of us have long ago lost our bodies. ~Ken Wilbur


Mindfulness of the body is awareness of... the taste and smell of this moment. ~Steve Hagen


If we were meant to be nude, we would have been born that way. ~Author Unknown


I use the word "fat." I use that word because that's what people are: they're fat. They're not bulky; they're not large, chunky, hefty or plump. And they're not big-boned. Dinosaurs were big-boned. These people are not overweight: this term somehow implies there is some correct weight. There is no correct weight. Heavy is also a misleading term. An aircraft carrier is heavy; it's not fat. Only people are fat, and that's what fat people are! They're fat! ~George Carlin


Hate and fear can poison the body as surely as any toxic chemicals. ~Joseph Krimsky


Why do we pay for psychotherapy when massages cost half as much? ~Jason Love


We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life. ~William Godwin


This body, full of faults,
Has yet one great quality:
Whatever it encounters in this temporal life
Depends upon one's actions.
~Siddha Nagarjuna


A girl without freckles is like a night without stars. ~Author Unknown


You know the definition of the perfectly designed machine.... The perfectly designed machine is one in which all its working parts wear out simultaneously. I am that machine. ~Frederick Alexander Lindemann


I am a private person, but I will reveal this about myself: if you start massaging my shoulders, don't expect me to tell you to stop. ~Robert Brault,www.robertbrault.com


Full nakedness! All joyes are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth'd must be,
To taste whole joyes.
~John Donne


Your body is a temple, but only if you treat it as one. ~Terri Guillemets


For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do, they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities. ~John Updike


The poor body has had very hard lines. Poets, philosophers and preachers have covered it with ridicule, abuse, and lamentation. Shakespeare calls it a muddy vesture of decay; Plato described it as a jibbing horse; Jeremy Taylor treats it almost as if it were the Devil himself. But if the poor thing had wit enough to speak for itself, it would say, Whence comes envy? Is it not a vice of the mind? Whence pride?— the mind again. Whence ambition?—the mind again. Whence covetousness—robbery—murder? If the mind has not all to do with these, at any rate she has the largest part of the guilt. Why, give the poor body a beefsteak and a glass of beer, and it is content. 'Tis the mind that leads it such a dance after the vain glories of the world, and makes it work all kinds of wickedness in the struggle to gain them. Did Robespierre slay his thousands to please his body? What could his body get by it? No. He wanted to please the fancies of his villainous mind. ~Charles Buxton


If your body's not right, the rest of your day will go all wrong. Take care of yourself. ~Terri Guillemets


Some patients I see are actually draining into their bodies the diseased thoughts of their minds. ~Zacharty Bercovitz


A human being is an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing. ~Christopher Morley


The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil; and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity. ~Maria Montessori


Your heart knows not how to lie. It is great that it lays deep in your chest and not in your mouth. ~Kak Sri


The mind can cook up very subtle syndromes to throw at our bodies. ~Terri Guillemets


The body is sensitive. It registers every thought and feeling. Be tender with it. ~Brendan O'Regan


We don't stop at our skin. ~Dolores Krieger, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine


Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! - ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is - nor what faith or art or health really is. ~Walt Whitman


Skin does not equal sin. ~Author Unknown


Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together. ~Charles Caleb Colton


We have a pharmacy inside us that is absolutely exquisite. It makes the right medicine, for the precise time, for the right target organ—with no side effects. ~Deepak Chopra


The best and most efficient pharmacy is within your own system. ~Robert C. Peale