Flesh Quotes - Page 25

• An old body when it is loved becomes a sacred treasure; and sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to us as a sacrament and be so used or it is meaningless. The flesh is suffused by the spirit, and it is forgetting this in the act of love-making that creates cynicism and despair.

  May Sarton

  Sex, Despair, Treasure

  May Sarton (2014). “Recovering: A Journal”, p.95, Open Road Media

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• All flesh is not venison.

  George Herbert

  Venison

  George Herbert, Christopher Harvey, George Gilfillan (1857). “The poetical works of George Herbert”, p.325

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• There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart; he does not feel for man.

  William Cowper

  Heart, Men, Doe

  William Cowper, James Sambrook (2016). “William Cowper: The Task and Selected Other Poems”, p.111, Routledge

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• All flesh is grass. and all its glory fades
  Like the fair flower dishevell'd in the wind;
  Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream;
  The man we celebrate must find a tomb,
  And we that worship him, ignoble graves.

  William Cowper

  Death, Dream, Flower

  William Cowper (1856). “The task, Table talk, and other poems: With critical observations of various authors on his genius and character, and notes, critical and illustrative”, p.186

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• Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader who has once gratified his appetite with calumny makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputations!

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Reputation, Ever After

  Oliver Goldsmith (1871). “The works of Oliver Goldsmith: Vicar of Wakefield, select poems and comedies, with intr., notes and a life by J.F. Waller”, p.211

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• Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty!

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Sublime, Mind, Steel

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher STOWE (2015). “Uncle Tom's Cabin”, p.74, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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• What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?

  Gail Godwin

  Journey, Dust, Would Be

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• Every child was taught from his cradle that money was Mammon, the chief agent of the flesh and the devil. As he grew up it was his duty as a Christian and a gentleman to appear to despise filthy lucre, whatever his secret opinion of it might be.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  Christian, Money, Children

  Rebecca Harding Davis (1904). “Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography”, p.23, Vanderbilt University Press

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• When the flesh presents thee with delights, then present thyself with dangers; where the world possesses thee with vain hopes, there possess thyself with true fear; when the devil brings thee oil, bring thou vinegar. The way to be safe is never to be secure.

  Francis Quarles

  Oil, Temptation, Devil

  Francis Quarles (1844). “Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles”, p.94

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• An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.

  Socrates

  Daughter, Revenge, Pride

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• [The sea] is the healer and the reviver, it cleanses the cavities of self-disgust and melancholy, of sloth and negation with the salt solution of life. It cures the lethargies of flesh and spirit with the slap and shake of elemental force. It cradles and comforts. Give it trust and it holds you secure; fight it and it kills.

  Marya Mannes

  Ocean, Fighting, Self

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• Flesh is merely a lesson. We learn it & pass on.

  Erica Jong

  Body, Lessons

  Erica Jong (2007). “What Do Women Want?: Essays by Erica Jong”, p.153, Penguin

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• Jealousy ... is an affliction of the spirit which, unlike some sins of the flesh, gives no one any pleasure.

  Muriel Spark

  Jealousy, Giving, Affliction

  Muriel Spark (2016). “The Finishing School”, p.46, Canongate Books

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• But virtue too, as well as vice, is clad in flesh and blood.

  Edmund Waller

  Blood, Vices, Virtue

  Edmund Waller, John Denham (sir.) (1857). “The poetical works of Edmund Waller and sir John Denham, with mem. and critical dissertation by G. Gilfillan”, p.98

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• Injustice experienced in the flesh, in deeply wounded flesh, is the stuff out of which change explodes.

  Margaret Mead

  Stuff, Injustice, Wounded

  Margaret Mead (1972). “Blkberry Winter”

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• There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David.

  John Ruskin

  Beauty, Character, Thinking

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• The White Protestant's ultimate sympathy must be with science, factology, and committee rather than with sex, birth, heat, flesh, creation, the sweet and the funky; they must vote, manipulate, control, and direct, these Protestants who are the center of power in our land, they must go for what they believe is reason when it is only the Square logic of the past.

  Norman Mailer

  Sweet, Sex, Believe

  "Advertisements for Myself". Book by Norman Mailer, 1959.

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• Nothing is more democratic, less judgmental, than water. Water doesn't care whether flesh is withered or fresh; it caresses aged flesh and firm flesh with equal love.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Sports, Water, Care

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

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• The real reason women fall in love abroad is not that they are free of domestic inhibitions but that they translate their love of stone and place into love of flesh. ... Is this true?

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Falling In Love, Travel, Real

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

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• Disease may score a direct hit on only one member of a family, but shrapnel tears the flesh of the others.

  Betty Rollin

  Tears, May, Disease

  Betty Rollin (2008). “Last Wish”, p.122, PublicAffairs

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• A woman has all too much substance in a man's eyes at the best of times. That is why men like women to be slim. Her lack of flesh negates her. The less of her there is, the less notice he need take of her. The more like a male she appears to be, the safer he feels.

  Fay Weldon

  Eye, Men, Males

  Fay Weldon (1967). “... and the wife ran away”

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• He is our Father - the Father of our Spirits, and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are, and is now an exalted being.

  Brigham Young

  Father, Men, Spirit

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• Few things in this world more trouble people than poverty, or the fear of poverty; and, indeed, it is a sore affliction; but, like all other ills that flesh is heir to, it has its antidote, its reliable remedy. The judicious application of industry, prudence and temperance is a certain cure.

  Hosea Ballou

  People, World, Affliction

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• There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body.

  Novalis

  Men, Hands, Heaven

  Novalis (1995). “Novalis and the poets of pessimism: with an English translation by James Thomson ("B.V.") of Hymns to night”

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• In families there are frequently matters of which no one speaks, nor even alludes. There are no words for these matters. As the binding skeleton beneath the flesh is never acknowledged by us and, when at last it defines itself, is after all an obscenity.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Family, Skeletons, Matter

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