Every moment of our lives we are either growing or dying—and it’s largely a choice, not fate. Throughout its life cycle, every one of the body’s trillions of cells is driven to grow and improve its ability to use more of its innate yet untapped capacity. Research biologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who was twice awarded the Nobel Prize, called this syntropy, which he defined as the “innate drive in living matter to perfect itself”. It turns conventional thinking upside down…As living cells—or as people—there is no staying the same. If we aim for some middle ground or status quo, it’s an illusion—beneath the surface what’s actually happening is we’re dying, not growing. And the goal of a lifetime is continued growth, not adulthood. As Rene Dubos put it, “Genius is childhood recaptured”. For this to happen, studies show that we must recapture—or prevent the loss of—such child-like traits as the ability to learn, to love, to laugh about small things, to leap, to wonder, and to explore. It’s time to rescue ourselves from our grown-up ways before it’s too late.
—Robert K. Cooper (b.1957) American Author, Psychologist
The basic Female body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panty-girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle, brassiere, stomacher, chemise, virgin zone, spike heels, nose ring, veil, kid gloves, fishnet stockings, fichu, bandeau, Merry Widow, weepers, chokers, barrettes, bangles, beads, lorgnette, feather boa, basic black, compact, Lycra stretch one-piece with modesty panel, designer peignoir, flannel nightie, lace teddy, bed, head.
—Margaret Atwood (b.1939) Canadian Writer, Poet, Critic
The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new.
—Norman O. Brown (1913–2002) American Social Philosopher, Writer
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Satirist, Short Story Writer
A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condenses and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons in his environment over the control of the individual’s body.
—Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian-American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst
For not a particle of respect had Thoreau to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Hide your body in the Big Dipper.
—Zen Proverb Japanese School of Mahayana Buddhism
The chief purpose of the body is to carry the brain around.
—Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American Inventor, Scientist, Entrepreneur
An impersonal and scientific knowledge of the structure of our bodies is the surest safeguard against prurient curiosity and lascivious gloating.
—Marie Stopes (1880–1958) British Author, Social Activist
The physical symptoms of fight or flight are what the human body has learned over thousands of years to operate efficiently and at the highest level…anxiety is a cognitive interpretation of that physical response.
—John Eliot (b.1971) American Psychologist, Academic
In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.
—Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American Poet, Essayist
Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
No one hates his body.
—Augustine of Hippo (354–430) Roman-African Christian Philosopher
Wondrous hole! Magical hole! Dazzlingly influential hole! Noble and effulgent hole! From this hole everything follows logically: first the baby, then the placenta, then, for years and years and years until death, a way of life. It is all logic, and she who lives by the hole will live also by its logic. It is, appropriately, logic with a hole in it.
—Cynthia Ozick (b.1928) American Novelist, Short-story Writer, Essayist
The body is mortal, but the person dwelling in the body is immortal and immeasurable.
—The Bhagavad Gita Hindu Scripture
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Disease is the tax which the soul pays for the body, as the tenant pays house-rent for the use of the house.
—Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836–86) Indian Hindu Philosopher
Animals, we have been told, are taught by their organs. Yes, I would add, and so are men, but men have this further advantage that they can also teach their organs in return.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wander at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
It’s easy to act as if you are a weathervane, always changing your beliefs and words, trying to please everyone around you. But we were born to be lighthouses, not weathervanes. Imagine a vertical axis running through the center of your heart, from your deepest roots to your highest aspirations. That’s your lighthouse. It anchors you in the world and frees you from having to change directions every time the weather shifts. Inside this lighthouse there is a lens and a light. The light represents who you are when nobody else is looking. That light was meant to keep shining, no matter how dark or stormy it gets outside…when you find that light inside you, you will know it. Don’t let anyone else dim it…and one more thing: remember to look for the light inside others. If at first you can’t see it, look deeper. It’s there.
—Robert K. Cooper (b.1957) American Author, Psychologist
I said to myself: “You mean all those people out there that I’ve been envying because they’re not afraid to move ahead with their lives have really been afraid? Why didn’t somebody tell me!?” I guess I never asked.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) American Military Leader
Is that what I want? The model family, two plus two in an easy home assembly kit? I don’t want a model, I want the full-scale original. I don’t want to reproduce, I want to make something entirely new.
—Jeanette Winterson (b.1959) English Novelist, Journalist
It takes more than just a good looking body. You’ve got to have the heart and soul to go with it.
—Epictetus (55–135) Ancient Greek Philosopher
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