A healthy soul cannot live in a dry body.
—French Proverb
What is said over the dead lion’s body could not be said to him alive.
—African Proverb
Thick body, weak soul.
—Persian Proverb
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
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Better to satisfy the body than to tarnish the soul.
—Chinese Proverb
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
When the head is sick the whole body is sick.
—Dutch Proverb
Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Doctors purge the body, ministers the conscience, lawyers the purse.
—German Proverb
The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.
—Unknown
You can wash your body but not your soul.
—Yiddish Proverb
The body of man is a machine which winds its own springs.
—Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–51) French Physician, Philosopher
The body of joy is not so big.
—African Proverb
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Death is a shadow that always follows the body.
—English Proverb
Beyond my body my veins are invisible.
—Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Poet
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
Where the body wants to rest, there the legs must carry it.
—Polish Proverb
When the heart acts the body is its slave.
—African Proverb
The eye is the jewel of the body.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The physician prescribes the medicine, the vulture waits for the body.
—Turkish Proverb
A little body often harbors a great soul.
—Common Proverb
The mind is the emperor of the body.
—Chinese Proverb
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
A feeble body weakens the mind.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor