quotations about the body
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him--that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Vivekananda, World Teacher
Death alone discloses how insignificant are the puny bodies of men.
JUVENAL
Satires
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
JOHN DONNE
"The Ecstacy"
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own.
PAUL THE APOSTLE
1 Corinthians 6:19
Our bodies do not fit us, but caricature and satirize us. Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Conduct of Life
For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world. My body requires no attention. It's not hungry. It's neither warm or cold. It's resigned to being left undisturbed. Why have I troubled to bring it here? I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet. This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels. It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I've gone through make possible.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Spirit of St. Louis
Flesh is our indisputable commonality. Whatever our race, our religion, our politics we are faced every morning with the fact of our bodies. Their frailties, their demands, their desires. And yet the erotic appetites that spring from--and are expressed through--those bodies, are so often a source of bitter dissension and division.
CLIVE BARKER
introduction, "One Flesh" exhibition, April 4-27, 1997
A person must take care to exercise moderate discipline over the body and subject it to the Spirit by means of fasting, vigils, and labor. The goal is to have the body obey and conform--and not hinder--the inner person and faith. Unless it is held in check, we know it is the nature of the body to undermine faith and the inner person.
MARTIN LUTHER
The Freedom of a Christian
Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.
SARA GRUEN
Water for Elephants
But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.
BIBLE
1 Corinthians 9:27
The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed.
ROGER VON OECH
Creativity and Innovation for Managers
We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
ARISTOTLE
Aristotle's Psychology
For the body at best
Is a bundle of aches,
Longing for rest;
It cries when it wakes.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
Moriturus
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
JAMES RUNCIE
The Colour of Heaven
The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.
THOMAS EDISON
attributed, Who Goes There?
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
This body had carried me through a hard life. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to.
VERONICA ROTH
Carve the Mark
I believe in the flesh and the body, which is worthy of worship.
RICHARD JEFFERIES
The Story of My Heart
The body is wiser than its inhabitant. The body is the soul. We ignore its aches, its pains, its eruptions, because we fear the truth. The body is God's messenger.
ERICA JONG
Fear of Fifty
Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
ANTHONY BOURDAIN
Kitchen Confidential