Quotes about skin
page 6

Paul Klee photo

“Pictures have their skeleton, muscles, and skin like human beings. One may speak of the specific anatomy of the picture. A picture representing 'a naked person' must not be created by the laws of human anatomy, but only by those of compositional anatomy. First one builds an armature on which the picture is to be constructed.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 840, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910

Neil Young photo

“Did you see them in the river?
They were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that the empty quiver,
Brown skinned Indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Broken Arrow, from Buffalo Springfield Again (1967)
Song lyrics, With Buffalo Springfield

Benjamin Spock photo

“We used to think of cow's milk as a nearly perfect food. However, over the past several years, researchers have found new information that has caused many of us to change our opinion. This has provoked a lot of understandable controversy, but I have come to believe that cow's milk is not necessary for children. First, it turns out that the fat in cow's milk is not the kind of fat ("essential fatty acids") needed for brain development. Instead, milk fat is too rich in the saturated fats that promote artery blockages. Also, cow's milk can make it harder for a child to stay in iron balance. Milk is extremely low in iron and slows down iron absorption. It can also cause subtle blood loss in the digestive tract that causes the child to lose iron. … Some children have sensitivities to milk proteins, which show up as ear problems, respiratory problems, or skin conditions. Milk also has traces of antibiotics, estrogens, and other things a child does not need. There is, of course, nothing wrong with human breast milk — it is perfect for infants. For older children, there are many good soy and rice milk products and even nondairy "ice creams" that are well worth trying. If you are using cow's milk in your family, I would encourage you to give these alternatives a try.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945), Seventh edition (1998), p. 346

Robert F. Kennedy photo
Martin Amis photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“The make-up sat on the surface of my skin like scrambled egg.”

Maureen Lipman (1946) British actress, columnist and comedienne

Something to Fall Back on

Neal Stephenson photo
Max Beckmann photo

“The metaphysics of substance. The strange feeling which comes over us when we sense: this is skin – this is bone – all in a single vision that is completely unearthly. The dreaminess of our existence mixed at the same time with the indescribably sweet illusion of reality.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckmann's sketchbook - probably referring to his last triptych painting 'The Argonauts', he painted in 1950, the year Beckmann died
1940s

Ram Dass photo
Misty Lee photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Elton John photo
Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Samuel Butler photo
Ben Gibbard photo

“You touch her skin
And then you think
That she is beautiful
But she don't mean a thing to me”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Tiny Vessels
Transatlanticism (2003)

Karen Blixen photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Ossip Zadkine photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Chris Cornell photo

“Since the soul in me is dead,
Better save the skin.”

Mortuus in anima<br/>curam gero cutis.

Archpoet (1130–1165) 12th century poet

Mortuus in anima
curam gero cutis.
Source: "Confession", Line 39

Charles Baudelaire photo

“A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her lithe and flowing clothes,Sweet bath, suavely
Scented with ointments,has acquired a delicacy of skin, a refinement of tone, a kind of androgyny without which the toughest and most virile of geniuses remains, when it comes to artistic perfection, an incomplete being.”

<p>L’homme qui, dès le commencement, a été longtemps baigné dans la molle atmosphère de la femme, dans l’odeur de ses mains, de son sein, de ses genoux, de sa chevelure, de ses vêtements souples et flottants,</p><p>Dulce balneum suavibus
Unguentatum odoribus,</p><p>y a contracté une délicatesse d’épiderme et une distinction d’accent, une espèce d’androgynéité, sans lesquelles le génie le plus âpre et le plus viril reste, relativement à la perfection dans l’art, un être incomplet.</p>
"Un mangeur d'opium," VII: Chagrins d'enfance http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Paradis_artificiels_-_II#VII_CHAGRINS_D.E2.80.99ENFANCE
Les paradis artificiels (1860)

Nastassja Kinski photo

“I always fall in love with someone while I'm working in a film. It's a joy to get up in the morning. Sometimes when I'm not infatuated, I just make things up in my mind. Making a film is such an intense thing. You're eliminating everything in your life and you're absorbed into the world of the movie. It's exciting. It's like somebody saying you have an illness and you only have this short time to live. Then you live it that life is over with. Good-bye. You never see any of the people again. But meanwhile you have this short life in which you can do and feel and fantasize about all kinds of things because you know it will soon be over. So I always fall in love. Then you slip out of it, like a skin you take off, and you're naked and you're cold but it's exciting because there is going to be something new. My relationships are as intense and as giving and as short as my parts are. I would pump everything into a person. I would give my left arm that it was for life, but it dies so shortly. And when it dies, it doesn't even leave traces. The relationship vanishes into space. When I finish a part, it's the same feeling. I leave people and people leave me, I leave parts and parts leave me. I say it is 'the flow of life,' but it affects me terribly. Every once in a while I have such a breakdown, question every move.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

Taylor Swift photo
Lucille Ball photo
Daniel Hannan photo
Charles Stross photo

“A dark-skinned human with four arms walks toward me across the floor of the club, clad only in a belt strung with human skulls.”

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 1, “Duel” (p. 1; opening line)

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Stéphane Mallarmé photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Heidi Klum photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“God, say some philosophers, manifests himself in the sublunary world in particular beauties, truths and acts of benevolence; properly, the values should be conjoined to shadow their identity in the godhead, but this happens so infrequently that one must suppose divinity condones a kind of diabolic fracture or else, and perhaps my book is already giving some hint of this, he demonstrates his ineffable freedom through contriving at times a wanton inconsistency. If this is so, we need not wonder at Messalina’s failure to match her beauty with a love of truth and goodness. She was a chronic liar and she was thoroughly bad. But her beauty, we are told, was a miracle. The symmetry of her body obeyed all the golden rules of the mystical architects, her skin was without even the most minuscule flaw and it glowed as though gold had been inlaid behind translucent ivory, her breasts were full and yet pertly disdained earth’s pull, the nipples nearly always erect, and visibly so beneath her byssinos, as in a state of perpetual sexual excitation, the areolas delicately pigmented to a kind of russet. The sight of her weaving bare white arms was enough, it is said, to make a man grit his teeth with desire to be encircled by them; the smooth plain of her back, tapering to slenderness only to expand lusciously to the opulence of her perfect buttocks, demanded unending caresses.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

John F. Kennedy photo

“No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Rice University speech

Lily Tomlin photo

“There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

As Judith Beasley in The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)

George William Curtis photo
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes photo
Stephenie Meyer photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Heidi Klum photo
Michelle Obama photo

“The colour of the skin is less important than the spirit wich moves it.”

Edmund Cooper (1926–1982) British writer

The Last Continent (1970)

Gautama Buddha photo
Salmon P. Chase photo

“True democracy makes no enquiry about the color of skin, or the place of nativity, whereever it sees man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights.”

Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) Chief Justice of the United States

Address accepting a testimonial of gratitude from the colored people of Cincinnati for the advocacy in the case of Samuel Watson (February 12, 1845).

Robert E. Howard photo
Stella McCartney photo
Karen Blixen photo
Nathalia Crane photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Tom Hanks photo
Harry Reid photo

“Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all Republicans have come up with is this slow down, stop everything, let's start over. You think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough. When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted slow down, there will be a better day to do that. The day isn't quite right. When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today. More recently, when chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut, one of the people who will go down as a chief champion of the bill before us today, said that Americans should be able to take care of their families without fear of losing their jobs, you heard the same old excuses, seven years of fighting and more than one presidential veto, it was slow down, stop everything, start over. History is repeating itself before our eyes. There are now those who don't think it is the right time to reform health care. If not now, when, madam president? But the reality for many that feel that way, it will never, never be a good time to reform health care.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

On the Senate floor, during a debate on health care reform, December 7, 2009
Reid Compares Health Reform Bill with Slavery, Suffrage - George's Bottom Line, abcnews.com, December 7, 2009, 2009-12-08 http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/12/reid-compares-health-reform-bill-with-slavery-suffrage.html,

Eric R. Kandel photo
William Drummond of Hawthornden photo
Pauline Hanson photo

“I do not believe that the colour of one's skin determines whether you are disadvantaged.”

Pauline Hanson (1954) Australian politician

Maiden Speech (1996)

St. Vincent (musician) photo

“Your skin's so fair its not fair”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"Your Lips Are Red"
Marry Me (2007)

Brooks D. Simpson photo
Gyles Brandreth photo
Nastassja Kinski photo
Peter Gabriel photo
Bruce Springsteen photo

“Ain't no angel gonna greet me.
It's just you and I my friend.
My clothes don't fit me no more.
I walked a thousand miles
Just to slip this skin.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Streets of Philadelphia"
Song lyrics, Singles

Donald N. Levine photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Franka Potente photo
Antoni Tàpies photo

“The tattoo can only exist as part of the skin, as a drawing always is an incision in the material and therefore cannot be parted from it.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Source: undated quotes, Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003,' (2004), p. 27.

Pete Doherty photo

“Make no mistake
She sheds her skin like a snake
On the dirty road to fame.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"There She Goes (A Little Heartache)"
Lyrics and poetry

Joseph Meek photo

“A man spends the first year of his life learning that he ends at his own skin, and the rest of his life learning that he doesn't.”

Saul Gorn (1912–1992) computer scientist

"The Individual and Political Life of Information Systems", in Heilprin, Markuson, and Goodman, ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on Education for Information Science, Warrenton, Virginia, September 7-10, 1965 (Washington, DC: Spartan Books, 1965)

Qu Yuan photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Vinko Vrbanić photo

“Isn’t freedom even this pig skin, which roasted like this crunches so nicely under the teeth?”

Furmani-Sokolov let, 2011, concluding statement Sokolov let
Freedom

Mike Scott photo

“Come with me on a journey beneath the skin
We will look together for the Pan within.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Pan Within"
This Is the Sea (1985)

Margaret Cho photo
Michael Franti photo

“The harder they hit us, the louder we become, kind of like the skin on a drum.”

Michael Franti (1966) American rapper

Skin On The Drum, Stay Human (2001)

J.M. Coetzee photo
Walter Raleigh photo

“Fame's but a hollow echo; gold, pure clay;
Honour, the darling but of one short day,
Beauty—th' eye's idol—but a damasked skin;
State, but a golden prison to live in
And torture free-born minds.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

"A Farewell to the Vanities of the World" http://www.bartleby.com/331/467.html, lines 3–7. Author uncertain. Attributed to Henry Wotton and to Raleigh.
Attributed

Pat Condell photo

“It seems to me that if God had intended for you to cover your face then, in His wisdom, He would have provided you with a flap of skin for the purpose.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"The trouble with Islam" (16 March 2007)
2007

Ilana Mercer photo
Andrew Marvell photo

“I disagree with Les. We always found good cunt at the Lyceum. Friendly cunt, clean cunt, spare cunt, jeans and knicker stuffed full of nice juicy hairy cunt, handfuls of cunt, palmful grabbing the cunt by the stem, or the root – infantile memories of cunt – backrow slides – slithery oily cunt, the cunt that breathes – the cunt that’s neatly wrapped in cotton, in silk, in nylon, that announces, that speaks or thrusts, that winks that’s squeezed in a triangle of furtive cloth backed by an arse that’s creamy, springy billowy cushiony tight, knicker lined, knicker skinned, circumscribed by flowers and cotton, by views, clinging knicker, juice ridden knicker, hot knicker, wet knicker, swelling vulva knicker, witty cunt, teeth smiling the eyes biting cunt, cultured cunt, culture vulture cunt, finger biting cunt, cunt that pours, cunt that spreads itself over your soft lips, that attacks, cunt that imagines – cunt you dream about, cunt you create as a Melba, a meringue with smooth sides – remembered from school boys’ smelly first cunt, first foreign cunt, amazing cunt – cunt that’s cruel. Cunt that protects itself and makes you want it even more cunt – cunt that smells of the air, of the earth, of bakeries, of old apples, of figs, of sweat of hands of sour yeast of fresh fish cunt. So – are we going Les? We might pick up a bit of crumpet.”

East (1975), Scene 17

Tiberius photo

“To the governors who recommended burdensome taxes for his provinces, he [Tiberius] wrote in answer that it was the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not skin it.”
Praesidibus onerandas tributo provincias suadentibus rescripsit boni pastoris esse tondere pecus non deglubere.

Tiberius (-42–37 BC) 2nd Emperor of Ancient Rome, member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

From Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, III. Tiberius, Ch. 32; translation by J. C. Rolfe
Latter component of the quotation often paraphrased as Boni pastoris est tondere pecus non deglubere.
Indirect quotations

Clarence Thomas photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Fiona Apple photo

“We are no more alike under the skin than we are on top of it.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 134

Russell Brand photo

“With each tentative tiptoe and stumble, I had to inwardly assure myself that I was a good comedian and that my life was not pointless. “I am addicted to comfort,” I thought as I tumbled into the wood chips. I have become divorced from nature; I don’t know what the names of the trees and birds are. I don’t know what berries to eat or which stars will guide me home. I don’t know how to sleep outside in a wood or skin a rabbit. We have become like living cutlets, sanitized into cellular ineptitude. They say that supermarkets have three days’ worth of food. That if there was a power cut, in three days the food would spoil. That if cash machines stopped working, if cars couldn’t be filled with fuel, if homes were denied warmth, within three days we’d be roaming the streets like pampered savages, like urban zebras with nowhere to graze. The comfort has become a prison; we’ve allowed them to turn us into waddling pipkins. What is civilization but dependency? Now, I’m not suggesting we need to become supermen; that solution has been averred before and did not end well. Prisoners of comfort, we dread the Apocalypse. What will we do without our pre-packed meals and cozy jails and soporific glowing screens rocking us comatose? The Apocalypse may not arrive in a bright white instant; it may creep into the present like a fog. All about us we may see the shipwrecked harbingers foraging in the midsts of our excess. What have we become that we can tolerate adjacent destitution? That we can amble by ragged despair at every corner? We have allowed them to sever us from God, and until we take our brothers by the hand we will find no peace.”

Revolution (2014)

Colum McCann photo
Marie-Louise von Franz photo