What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.
—Yiddish Proverb
Eating and drinking holds body and soul together.
—German Proverb
The body achieves what the mind believes.
—Indian 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
A little body often harbors a great soul.
—Common Proverb
When the belly is empty, the body becomes spirit; and when it is full, the spirit becomes body.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (c.1213–91) Persian Poet
The body never lies.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
The character of a man lies not in his body but in his soul.
—Japanese 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
Better to satisfy the body than to tarnish the soul.
—Chinese Proverb
You can wash your body but not your soul.
—Yiddish Proverb
Wisdom is lost in a fat man’s body.
—Japanese Proverb
The body of man is a machine which winds its own springs.
—Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–51) French Physician, Philosopher
The physician prescribes the medicine, the vulture waits for the body.
—Turkish Proverb
There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by.
—George Meredith (1828–1909) British Novelist, Poet, Critic
The body of joy is not so big.
—African Proverb
When the heart acts the body is its slave.
—African Proverb
Our body is simply a social structure made of many souls.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
The mind is the emperor of the body.
—Chinese Proverb
When the heart is at ease, the body is healthy.
—Chinese Proverb
Beyond my body my veins are invisible.
—Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Poet
The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
Doctors purge the body, ministers the conscience, lawyers the purse.
—German Proverb
What is said over the dead lion’s body could not be said to him alive.
—African Proverb
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker
The chief purpose of the body is to carry the brain around.
—Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American Inventor, Scientist, Entrepreneur
Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French Essayist, Polymath, Philosopher
If our elaborate and dominating bodies are given us to be denied at every turn, if our nature is always wrong and wicked, how ineffectual we are – like fishes not meant to swim.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
Master and servant—both have the same body odor.
—Tibetan Proverb
Thick body, weak soul.
—Persian Proverb
There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man.—Nothing is holier than this high form.—We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body.
—Novalis (1772–1801) German Romantic Poet, Novelist
Sometimes your body is smarter than you are.
—Unknown
Do not refuse the body what it asks for.
—Mexican Proverb
A bath refreshes the body, tea refreshes the mind.
—Japanese Proverb
A feeble body weakens the mind.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
One body cannot perform two services.
—Chinese Proverb
Your body belongs to the Tsar, your soul to God, and your back to the squire.
—Russian Proverb
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
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
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
The labor of the body frees us from the pains of the mind, and thus makes the poor happy.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
Emotion always has its roots in the unconscious and manifests itself in the body.
—Irene Claremont de Castillejo (1885–1967) British Psychoanalyst
Where the body wants to rest, there the legs must carry it.
—Polish Proverb
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film 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
Death is a shadow that always follows the body.
—English Proverb
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