"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
— C.S. Lewis

"Step Away from the Mean Girls…
…and say bye-bye to feeling bad about your looks.
Are you ready to stop colluding with a culture that makes so many of us feel physically inadequate? Say goodbye to your inner critic, and take this pledge to be kinder to yourself and others.

This is a call to arms. A call to be gentle, to be forgiving, to be generous with yourself. The next time you look into the mirror, try to let go of the story line that says you're too fat or too sallow, too ashy or too old, your eyes are too small or your nose too big; just look into the mirror and see your face. When the criticism drops away, what you will see then is just you, without judgment, and that is the first step toward transforming your experience of the world."
— Oprah Winfrey

""The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us." "
— Black Elk

""And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So brown eyes I hold you near
Cause you’re the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere"
"
— Death Cab for Cutie

"When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred."
— Virginia Woolf (Jacob's Room)

"I am not my body. My body is nothing without me."
— Tom Stoppard (Rock 'n' Roll: A New Play)

"'Right. I look fine. Except I don't,' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it."
— Zadie Smith (On Beauty)

"I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is,"
— Walt Whitman

"You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go. Don’t ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body."
— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

"I'm a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl."
— Björk

"Consider the holiness of your hands. They are how you do your work on this earth; they are a microcosm of the hands of the Goddess, and can change the world as easily as hers can."
— Dianne Sylvan (Body Sacred)

"By the grace of the Lady, whose face mirrors my own, may I ever remember I am made in her image, blessed and beautiful."
— Dianne Sylvan (Body Sacred)

"I stood behind the man’s chair, my blade at his throat.
“Why do you do it?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer. “Kill people, and blow up buildings, and sell drugs?”
It was what they all did. Committed crimes. That was why I killed them.
“You’re a criminal, a terrorist, a danger. And I have been asked to take you out.” I told him.
I was legend now, yet he asked the same question all the others did.
“What is your name?”
My sensitive ears tuned out the slit as my sword cut his neck.
I walked around the chair to see his face. I watched as his eyes–slowly at first–changed from blue to milky white. His skin went pale.
And as I heard him take his last breath, I ducked in so my lips hovered at his ear, and whispered, “My name, is Sharden.”"
— Alysha Speer (Sharden)

"Live to learn to love.
Learn to love to live.
Love to live to learn
so that you may live the life that you yearn.
"
— Rico Dasheem

"Love whoever you want, no matter the age. The soul never gets old, only the body"
— anda

"But who cares if the body's cold?
The mind loses its clutter,
It gives an edge to all the songs
and verses that I utter
("The Confession") (circa 1140)"
— The Archpoet

"teach the mean girls
how to be feared
turn the weak ones
into servants
its all right because
you want what you can't have
oh no not again
so shut up i'm thinkin
oh no not again
at finishing school"
— Dashboard Confessional

"Body is a home, a prison and a grave."
— James Runcie (The Colour of Heaven)

"Afterward she lies nestled against me, her hair tickling my face. I stroke her lightly, memorizing her body. I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin."
— Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants)

"And this all causes her to wonder at the disparity between the silk dresses and the natural postures of the body, and to think: How far, HOW FAR, we are willing to go to pretend we are not of the body at all."
— Anita Shreve (Fortune's Rocks: A Novel)

"Everybody sees me as this sullen and insecure little thing. Those are just the sides of me that I feel necessary to show because no one else seems to be showing them."
— Fiona Apple

"Passion can transform the mind, body and spirit...
Passion can align you with the wisdom of nature and the power of what is in your heart."
— JoLynne Valerie

"Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"...the gym is a kind of wildlife preserve for bodily exertion. A preserve protects species whose habitat is vanishing elsewhere, and the gym (and home gym) accommodates the survival of bodies after the abandonment of the original sites of bodily exertion."
— Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking)

"It was your body....that danced at your first drum circle; it was your body that gave birth to your child; it was your body that got down and dirty in the back seat of your dad's station wagon; it was your body that shivered, sweated, clasped its hands, fell to its knees, wept, and laughed the first time you felt the presence of the goddess in your life."
— Dianne Sylvan (Body Sacred)

"...she is careful who she sleeps with, because only those willing totreat her witht he same reverence are worthy of her attention.

...you are the Goddess, and "all acts of love and pleasure" are your rituals"
— Dianne Sylvan

"She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance."
— Milan Kundera (Laughable Loves)

"Towards the end of the season it is not bad to have the body. To have experienced joy as the mere lifting of hunger is not to have known it less."
— Jorie Graham

"Euer Haus ist euer größerer Körper."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.
"
— Erica Jong

"The backs of my eyelids were black. I opened one eye, saw the body next to me, felt the blood on the floor, and I knew things were different now. But I also knew, that it was not the end."
— Alysha Speer (Sharden)

"Breathing for her, praying for her, thinking for her, my entire being revolved around her.
--Brae"
— Alysha Speer (Sharden)

"So the timing may have been cheesy, but the kiss was one-hundred percent not cheesy. More like chocolate, actually. "
— Alysha Speer (Sharden)

"There was fear, for maybe you were moving too quickly. Embarrassment, what if I was too much in love? Could he possibly ever love me nearly as much as I love him? It seemed impossible. My thoughts raced with confusion. What was to happen next? I didn’t know the steps to this process! I felt like I was dueling a choreographed dance—and I didn’t know where to go! I had to invent my movements, imagine the next step before I could take it.
I couldn’t imagine."
— Alysha Speer (Sharden)

"When a poet settled down to write a poem, could he foresee the lines he would write? Did his head constantly spin with riddles and rhymes and was his only job to put them down? What if he couldn’t get them to make sense, and no one, not even the person he cared for most, could have pleasure in reading it? What would he do?"
— Alysha Speer (Sharden)

"There was something behind the softness that intertwined our fingers together—love? It felt different from two days ago. All I could think about was his smooth hand, wrapped in mine. It was more than affection—but I wasn’t sure how much more, or if that would ever change. "
— Alysha Speer (Sharden)

"I was not weak; I did not cry. But it hurt me, more in a kind of refreshing, thrilling way, than a kind of pain that would cripple me and send me away crying. My fingernails dug into the palms of my hands, and my teeth bit into my lips, my knees were locked, but I could not faint."
— Alysha Speer (Sharden)

"You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so how could we take it back without asking"
— Jeannette Winterson

"…Those who’ve marred their appearance in any way by their actions in life aren’t forced to witness that marring. If they were, they’d become self-conscious and be unable to concentrate on improving themselves."
— Richard Matheson (What Dreams May Come)

"The lust of the flesh directs these desires [of personal union], however, to satisfaction of the body, often at the cost of a real and full communion of persons."
— Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) (Blessed Are the Pure of Heart: Catechesis on the Sermon on the Mount and Writings of St. Paul)

"I've gone through stages where I hate my body so much that I won't even wear shorts and a bra in my house because if I pass a mirror, that's the end of my day."
— Fiona Apple