Body Quotes

“If it weren't for the unconventionality of my desires, my mind might never have been forced to reckon with my body.”
― Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama

“Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts.”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

“Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.”
― Markus Zusak, Getting the Girl

“Conversation, to take another example, is one of the common pleasures of life, but not all conversation is pleasurable. The stutterer finds talking painful, and the listener is equally pained. Persons who are inhibited in expressing feeling are not good conversationalists. Nothing is more boring than to listen to a person talk in a monotone without feeling. We enjoy a conversation when there is a communication of feeling. We have pleasure in expressing our feelings, and we respond pleasurably to another person's expression of feeling. The voice, like the body, is a medium through which feeling flows, and when this flow occurs in an easy and rhythmic manner, it is a pleasure both to the speaker and listener.”
― Alexander Lowen, Pleasure: A Creative Approach To Life

“All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“I couldn't loose somebody else like that, without even the chance to say good-bye. Not again. Not her.”
― Stacey Kade

“The neural basis for the self, as I see it, resides with the continuous reactivation of at least two sets of representations. One set concerns representations of key events in an individual's autobiography, on the basis of which a notion of identity can be reconstructed repeatedly, by partial activation in topologically organized sensory maps. ...
In brief, the endless reactivation of updated images about our identity (a combination of memories of the past and of the planned future) constitutes a sizable part of the state of self as I understand it.
The second set of representations underlying the neural self consists of the primordial representations of an individual's body ... Of necessity, this encompasses background body states and emotional states. The collective representation of the body constitute the basis for a "concept" of self, much as a collection of representations of shape, size, color, texture, and taste can constitute the basis for the concept of orange.”
― António R. Damásio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

“Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose.”
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“It is as though we are understanding now what (William) Blake intuited, the senses were, in Eden, spread over the whole being. It might seem, then, that our bodies still live in Eden, but our minds refuse to know it.”
― Peter Redgrove, The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real: Our Uncommon Senses and Their Common Sense

“Your body would not get sick if you held no thought of resentment. It is neither good nor bad of itself. If we hold anything against anyone, we will suffer ourselves.”
― Donna Goddard, Waldmeer

“The lingerie department is the only one that she can reach in her wheelchair. Nevertheless, she is fired the next day because of complaints that a woman who is so obviously not sexually attractive selling alluring nightgowns makes customers uncomfortable. Daunted by her dismissal, she seeks consolation in the arms of the young manager and soon finds herself pregnant. Upon learning
of this news, he leaves her for a
nondisabled woman with a fuller
bustline and better homemaking skills in his inaccessible kitchen.”
― Rosemarie Garland Thomson

“The body is innocent. Deeply, beautifully, fundamentally innocent.”
― Rachel Hartman

“Folks do not want to see a body disappear before their very eyes. Not me at least.”
― Kaye Gibbons, Ellen Foster

“Sometimes, we feel conscious but unable to move our body.
The first thing to do is focus in a prayer, then start to wink frequently.
By this way, slowly but sure our body can be moved totally by our persistent willpower.”
― Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident], Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“That was one other time when my whole body reacted to the fear and went out of my own control. My nerves came apart completely, and I started vomiting and vomiting. I couldn't stop. It had been such a narrow escape. I kept telling myself that I could take all of the pressure; but there were those times that my body seemed almost to shut itself down, to scream that what was happening was just too much.”
― Diet Eman, Things We Couldn't Say

“Do you have any idea who Erin was kissing?"
"Yeah, so we'll brush out teeth really, really thoroughly afterwards," I said, bumping her nose with mine gently. I wasn't going to let anyone spoil this moment.”
― Stacey Kade

“Your body is an intelligent organism; it knows how to heal itself.”
― Annie Wilson, Effect of Meditation on Cardiovascular Health, Immunity & Brain Fitness

“By the grace of the Lady, whose face mirrors my own, may I ever remember I am made in her image, blessed and beautiful.”
― Dianne Sylvan, The Body Sacred

“I usually like to interact with people who don't speak until it's necessary but I was intimidated by Carl's physique. I didn't feel inferior so much as incompatible. Carl existed on a plane where success was measured by physical feats. He had a brain because his body needed it, rather than the opposite. I didn't understand such people. I didn't know what they wanted, or might do.”
― Max Barry, Machine Man

“But illness does not always write itself upon the body, the sickness I search for is hidden deep within the brain. Sometimes it rises to the surface. Sometimes the face betrays what the body conceals. But there moments, these betrayals, last no longer than an instant. They come, they go, they pass over the patient, darkening and brightening his face like clouds gusting over a meadow. How is it possible, then, to tell what he is suffering when the visible signs of his inner disorder appear so fleetingly upon his face?”
― Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Madeleine Is Sleeping

“This is why we must transcend our physical bodies. Because a body is always going to piss you off”
― Suzanne Morrison

“There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring [making music] to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it.”
― william shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“I needed pain; I needed blood. Judge me if you want, but I’m talking about my own body. My own catharsis. About marking myself with beauty instead of ugliness.”
― Heather Durham, Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust

“Believing himself to be unseen by other bathers, he gave himself up to being alone with his body. He wriggled his toes, breathed hard through his nose, twisted his brown moustache where some drops of water still clung, and looked himself critically all over. The scrutiny seemed to satisfy him, as well as it might. I, whose only acquaintance was with bodies and minds developing, was suddenly confronted by maturity in its most undeniable form; and I wondered, what must it feel like to be him, master of those limbs which have passed beyond the need of gym and playing field, and exist for their own beauty and strength? What can they do, I thought, to be conscious of themselves?”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Which type of wedding gown best suits you?

If you are lucky enough to be tall and slender, you can pretty much get away with any type or shape of gown. That is why models are tall and slender—anything looks good on them!”
― Meg Cabot, Queen of Babble in the Big City

“Yes: I exist inside my body.
I’m not carrying the sun and the moon in my pocket.
I don’t want to conquer worlds because I slept badly,
And I don’t want to eat the world for breakfast because I have a stomach.
Indifferent?
No: a son of the earth, who, if he jumps, it’s wrong,
A moment in the air that’s not for us,
And only happy when his feet hit the ground again,
Pow! In reality where nothing’s missing!

(6/20/1919)”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“It's only horrible if you see it that way," Morrie said. "It's horrible to watch my body slowly wilt away to nothing. But it's also wonderful because of all the time I get to say good-bye."
He smiled. "Not everyone is so lucky.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

“Euer Haus ist euer größerer Körper.”
― Khalil Gibran

“And this all causes her to wonder at the disparity between the silk dresses and the natural postures of the body, and to think: How far, HOW FAR, we are willing to go to pretend we are not of the body at all.”
― Anita Shreve, Fortune's Rocks

“Between what i see in a field and what I see in another field
There passes for a moment the figure of a man.
His steps go with “him” in the same reality,
But I look at him and them, and they’re two things:
The “man” goes walking with his ideas, false and foreign,
And his steps go with the ancient system that makes legs walk.
I see him from a distance without any opinion at all.
How perfect that he is in him what he is — his body,
His true reality which doesn’t have desires or hopes,
But muscles and the sure and impersonal way of using them.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro