Quotes about flesh (817 quotes, page 2)

“I like thought which preserves a whiff of flesh and blood, and I prefer a thousand times an idea rising from sexual tension or nervous depression to empty abstraction.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Idea , Time

“"Forgive my body!" she said. She put her arms out to me, the tears flowing down her cheeks. "Think of my soul!" she said. "My soul is so beautiful, it can bring you so much! It is not ugly like my flesh!"”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Beauty , Soul , Forgiveness , Thinking

“What is our duty? To struggle so that a small flower may blossom from the dunghill of our flesh and mind.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: Humanity is such a lump of mud, each one of us is such a lump of mud. What is our duty? To struggle so that a small flower may blossom from the dunghill of our flesh and mind.
Out of things and flesh, out of hunger, out of fear, out of virtue and sin, struggle continually to create God.

Flowers

“Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends—
The man of men, the spirit of all flesh,
The fiery centre of an earthly world!”

Robert Browning Colombe's Birthday

Valence of Prince Berthold, in Act IV.
Colombe's Birthday (1844)
Context: p>He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.
One great aim, like a guiding-star, above—
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize;
A prize not near — lest overlooking earth
He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote,
So that he rest upon his path content:
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine,
And the faint circlet prophesies the orb,
He sees so much as, just evolving these,
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength,
To due completion, will suffice this life,
And lead him at his grandest to the grave.
After this star, out of a night he springs;
A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones
He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts,
Nor, as from each to each exultingly
He passes, overleaps one grade of joy.
This, for his own good: — with the world, each gift
Of God and man, — reality, tradition,
Fancy and fact — so well environ him,
That as a mystic panoply they serve —
Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind,
And work his purpose out with half the world,
While he, their master, dexterously slipt
From such encumbrance, is meantime employed
With his own prowess on the other half.
Thus shall he prosper, every day's success
Adding, to what is he, a solid strength —
An aery might to what encircles him,
Till at the last, so life's routine lends help,
That as the Emperor only breathes and moves,
His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk
Become a comfort or a portent, how
He trails his ermine take significance, —
Till even his power shall cease to be most power,
And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare
Peril their earth its bravest, first and best,
Its typified invincibility.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends—
The man of men, the spirit of all flesh,
The fiery centre of an earthly world!</p

Men , World

“If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech at Chicago (1858)
Context: There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men — descended by blood from our ancestors — among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe — German, Irish, French and Scandinavian — men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

Love , Men , Truth , World

“In the time of your life, live — so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.”

William Saroyan The Time of Your Life

The Time of Your Life (1939)
Context: In the time of your life, live — so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. Be the inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live — so that in the wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

Life , Death , World , Time

“Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh — that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

1 October 1849
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh — that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.

Death , Fear , Soul , Suffering

“More than attacks that are like ceremonial reviews, more than visible battles unfurled like banners, more even than the hand-to-hand encounters of shouting strife, War is frightful and unnatural weariness, water up to the belly, mud and dung and infamous filth. It is befouled faces and tattered flesh, it is the corpses that are no longer like corpses even, floating on the ravenous earth.”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: Waking, Paradis and I look at each other, and remember. We return to life and daylight as in a nightmare. In front of us the calamitous plain is resurrected, where hummocks vaguely appear from their immersion, the steel-like plain that is rusty in places and shines with lines and pools of water, while bodies are strewn here and there in the vastness like foul rubbish, prone bodies that breathe or rot.
Paradis says to me, "That's war."
"Yes, that's it," he repeats in a far-away voice, "that's war. It's not anything else."
He means — and I am with him in his meaning — "More than attacks that are like ceremonial reviews, more than visible battles unfurled like banners, more even than the hand-to-hand encounters of shouting strife, War is frightful and unnatural weariness, water up to the belly, mud and dung and infamous filth. It is befouled faces and tattered flesh, it is the corpses that are no longer like corpses even, floating on the ravenous earth. It is that, that endless monotony of misery, broken, by poignant tragedies; it is that, and not the bayonet glittering like silver, nor the bugle's chanticleer call to the sun!"
Paradis was so full of this thought that he ruminated a memory, and growled, "D'you remember the woman in the town where we went about a bit not so very long ago? She talked some drivel about attacks, and said, 'How beautiful they must be to see!'"
A chasseur who was full length on his belly, flattened out like a cloak, raised his bead out of the filthy background in which it was sunk, and cried, 'Beautiful? Oh, hell! It's just as if an ox were to say, 'What a fine sight it must be, all those droves of cattle driven forward to the slaughter-house!'

War , Water

“I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)
Jane Eyre (1847)
Context: Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!

God

“The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack enjoyment of the best life.”

Epicurus (-341–-269 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

20
Sovereign Maxims

Life , Death , Pleasure , Time

“Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"”

Robert Browning Rabbi ben Ezra

Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 70.

Soul , Help

“Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely — lay your life before him.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

As quoted in Bruce Lee: Artist of Life (1999) edited by John R. Little, p. 192

Life , Pain , Forgetting

“... forced to flee, he imagines that he is hunting. He does not hear his own cry of pain when he claws into his own flesh; he thinks he is expressing pleasure!”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Quotes from his operas, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Hans Sachs, Act 3, Scene 1
Original: (de) "... in Flucht geschlagen,
wähnt er zu jagen;
hört nicht sein eigen Schmerzgekreisch,
wenn er sich wühlt ins eig'ne Fleisch,
wähnt Lust sich zu erzeigen!"

Pain , Imagination , Pleasure , Thinking

“This body made of flesh is subject to death. If it is not washed for a single day, it stinks. We cannot trust the human body.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

48
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Death

“All which a man loves, for which he leaves everything else but that, is his god, thus the glutton and drunkard has for his idol his own flesh, the fornicator has for his idol the harlot and the greedy has for his idol silver and gold, and so the same for every other sinner.”

Jesus (-7–30 BC) Jewish preacher and religious leader, central figure of Christianity

Source: Gospel of Barnabas (c. 16th century AD manuscript), Ch. 33. The gospel's origins and author have been debated; several theories are speculative, and none has general acceptance. The Gospel of Barnabas is dated to the 13th to 15th centuries,[2] much too late to have been written by Barnabas (fl. 1st century CE). Many of its teachings are synchronous with those in the Quran and oppose the Bible, especially the New Testament; some, however, contradict the Quran.

Love , Making love , God

“Pure, holy simplicity confounds all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the flesh.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

World , Wisdom

“If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: 1850s, Autobiographical Sketch Written for Jesse W. Fell (1859)

Personality

“In the measure that love for the flesh prevails in you, you can never become brave and dauntless, on account of the host of adversaries that constantly surround the object of your love.”

Isaac of Nineveh (640–700) Eastern Orthodox saint

Source: The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, p. 115

Love

“An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Diary entry on James Joyce's Ulysses (16 August 1922), quoted in Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary (1953; 1965), p. 47

Books , Cooking

“Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Personal Talk, sonnet 3 (1806).

Books , World , Dreams , Strong

“Though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are still pretty glorious.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Variant: Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.
Source: The Dharma Bums

“A scar is not always a flaw. Sometimes a scar may be redemption inscribed in the flesh, a memorial to something endured, to something lost.”

Dean Koontz book The Good Guy

Source: The Good Guy

Memory

“A soul of water a soul of stone.
A soul by name a soul unknown.
The hours unmake our flesh our bone.
The Soul is all and all alone!”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Soul , Water

“Flesh could not keep its glamour, nor eyes their sheen. They would go to nothing soon. But monsters are forever.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

“I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Cars , Soul , Learning , Horse

“She was his soulmate, as much a part of him as the very flesh and bone that made him. She was with him, in him, in everything he did. She was everything he wanted from his life, the very measure of his dreams.”

Jennifer Donnelly book The Tea Rose

Source: The Tea Rose

Life , Dreams , Parting

“Shouts of dismay rose as the red flesh splattered against the table. It was only a tomato, but one would think I was pulping a decaying heart by the noise the big, strong FIB officers were making.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Dead Witch Walking

Thinking , Strong , Heart

“Sometimes I looked at her sleeping face, the living flesh of it, and was overwhelmed by how precarious it was to love a living thing. She could die simply from lack of water. It hardly seemed safer than falling in love with a plant.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: The First Bad Man

Love , Sleep , Water

“The ragamuffin gospel reveals that Jesus forgives sins, including the sins of the flesh; that He is comfortable with sinners who remember how to show compassion; but that He cannot and will not have a relationship with pretenders in the Spirit.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Forgiveness

“Wow, that was fun. Any place else you want to take me while we’re here? Maybe there’s a darker corner of hell than that hall of flesh-hungry demons, huh? (Sin)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Hell

“Our state cannot be severed, we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“What a man can take with a sword, a woman can give by her flesh alone. Life.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Fate

Source: Fool's Fate

Life

“Your very flesh shall be a great poem…”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Variant: And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Source: Leaves of Grass

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, (1963)
Source: I Have A Dream

Faith , Beauty , Dreams , Hope

“When the dawn was still long hours away, bad thoughts took on flesh and began to walk. In the middle of the night thoughts became zombies.”

Stephen King book Under the Dome

Source: Under the Dome

Night

“Mortality, behold, and fear,
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Fear , Thinking , Sleep , Change

“I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

“No rescue boat can save the touches I left bobbing in the wild ocean of your flesh, but if they cut open your heart, like the belly of a shark, dumped its contents on a table—would there be any trace of me?”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Source: The Splinter Factory

Heart

“Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others…
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

From the Preface to the 1855 edition of <i>Leaves of Grass</i>
Context: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . .
Context: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.... The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured.... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches.... and shall master all attachment.

Love , Stupidity , Sun , Animals

“Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no no, I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

God , Art , Feeling , Nature

“She was made of flesh and eyelashes.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: The Favorite Game

“All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones moving easily under the flesh.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "The Golden Notebook"
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: I knew, and it was an illumination — one of those things one has always known, but never understood before — that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh.
Context: I knew, and it was an illumination — one of those things one has always known, but never understood before — that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh. If this goes, then the conviction of life goes too. But I could feel none of this. … I knew I was moving into a new dimension, further from sanity than I had ever been. <!-- p. 585

Feeling , Dependency

“In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“Lula's borderline too much of a good thing in lots of ways. It isn't exactly that Lula is fat; it's more that she's too short for her weight and her clothes are too small for the volume of flesh she carries.”

Janet Evanovich Plum Lucky

Source: Plum Lucky

Way , Clothes

“Books are flesh-and-blood ideas and cry out, silently, when put to the torch.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Books , Idea , Cry

“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

People , Beauty , Home , Country

“words carry colors and sounds into the flesh”

Anaïs Nin book Delta of Venus

Source: Delta of Venus

Color

“On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's 70th birthday. "Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant: Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. (said of Mahatma Gandhi)
Source: On Peace

Birthday

“… I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.”

Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow

Source: The Sparrow

Love , Past , Future

“Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Children , World , Family , Communication

“Instead of going home, I drove to the library. To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood.”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

Home , Hell

“Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn't been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Love , Soul , Change

“In the flesh,” Maharet said. “In the flesh all wisdom begins. Beware the thing that has no flesh. Beware the gods, beware the, beware the devil.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Wisdom , God

“Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Life , Birth , Heart

“When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: The Cost of Discipleship

Life , Faith

“Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
-An-mei”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Way

“People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Friday (2 February)
Source: Nausea (1938)

People , Learning , Appearance

“But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.”

Plutarch book Moralia

I, 4
Moralia, Of Eating of Flesh
Context: For the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. And then we fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them.

Life , World , Soul , Light

“Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood

“The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Way , Lying , Time , Dead

“With his sunglasses gone and his scarf hanging down, there was no denying that he had no flesh, he had no skin, he had no eyes and he had no face.
All he had was a skull for a head.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable… I simply am not there.”

Bret Easton Ellis (1964) American novelist

Feeling , Sense

“Call me crazy, but there's just something cheering about seeing huge raptors tear into Eraser flesh.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Tear

“How many times already had I encountered the painful lesson that although we may wish for the barb to be pulled from our flesh, it leaves a welt that doesn't heal?”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Pain , Time

“A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Other Lyrics
Source: "The Favorite Game"
Context: Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.

“My principle anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ

Youth , Joy

“He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky worm-bent tabernacle.”

Cormac McCarthy book Suttree

page 130
Source: Suttree (1979)
Context: Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as in this flesh. This mawky wormbent tabernacle.

God , Soul

“Words are sexier than flesh.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

“Scars are medals branded on the flesh, and your enemies will be frightened by them because they are proof of your long experience of battle.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

“Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Price of Salt

Source: The Price of Salt

Flowers , Happiness

“Romans 6 - Our flesh is the instrument that Satan works through. When we say no to the flesh, we say no to the devil.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

Learning , Heart

“She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

Life , Pain , Feeling , Hurt

“Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There is only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Variant: There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.
Source: V for Vendetta (1989)

Idea , Thinking

“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Hound of the Baskervilles

Source: The Hound of the Baskervilles

“Water and stone
Flesh and bone
Night and morn
Rose and thorn
Tree and wind
Heart and mind”

Juliet Marillier book Cybele's Secret

Source: Cybele's Secret

Tree , Water , Heart , Night

“The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Food , Drink , Thinking

“it is good to be sitting some place
in public at 2:30 in the afternoon
without getting the flesh ripped from
your bones.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Soul , Baby

“So long as my body lives, and yours -- we are one flesh," he whispered, "And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours. Claire -- I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Hope , Soul , Parting

“No one should have to pay for love in flesh or blood. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Love

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Source: Self Reliance
Context: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

“The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Wolf

“Death,—a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 28
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Death , Way , Sense

“Listen up—there’s no war that will end all wars,’ Crow tells me. ‘War breeds war. Lapping up the blood shed by violence, feeding on wounded flesh. War is a perfect, self-contained being. You need to know that.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

War , Perfection

“Too much damned TV. Thinks he's Sherlock Holmes."
"That's professor Moriarty," corrected Foaly.
"Holmes, Moriarty, they both look the same with the flesh scorched off their skulls.”

Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl

Source: Artemis Fowl

Thinking

“We received our colouring from the Norsemen, hairy savages who hacked their gods to pieces and hung the flesh from trees. We are the ones who sacked Rome. Fear only feeble old age and death in bed. Don't forget who you are.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Death , God , Age , Fear

“My flesh looked like it wasn't trying. It looked like it hated being part of me.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

Hate , Parting

“The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.”

Yukio Mishima book Runaway Horses

Source: Runaway Horses

Sun

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Life , Wisdom , Soul , Tear

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Pain

“Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Dreams , Past , Future

“Oh God, Frankie, I breathe in rhythm with that man. You think that's not my flesh and blood after all these years?”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

God , Thinking

“Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

Light

“What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream”

Cormac McCarthy book Suttree

page 154
Source: Suttree (1979)
Context: Pale manchild were there last agonies? Were you in terror, did you know? Could you feel the claw that claimed you? And who is this fool kneeling over your bones, choked with bitterness? And what could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream.

God , Dreams