July 27, 2024, 3:46 a.m.
In a world where beauty standards are constantly evolving, embracing self-love and body positivity can often feel like a revolutionary act. Whether you're seeking a confidence boost, a reminder of your worth, or simply a few words of encouragement, inspiring body positivity quotes can be a powerful tool. In this post, we've carefully curated 44 uplifting and empowering quotes that celebrate the beauty of every body, encouraging you to embrace and love yourself just as you are. Dive in and let these words inspire your journey towards a more positive and affirming self-image.
1. “If I could put my brain in her body, the world would be mine for the taking.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips
2. “Euer Haus ist euer größerer Körper.” - Khalil Gibran
3. “As if one could do what one wanted with one's own body!” - Louis Aragon
4. “Besides this I place another equally obvious confirmation of my view that opera is based on the same principles as our Alexandrian culture. Opera is the birth of the theoretical man, the critical layman, not of the artist: one of the most surprising facts in the history of all the arts. It was the demand of throughly unmusical hearers that before everything else the words must be understood, so that according to them a rebirth of music is to be expected only when some mode of singing has been discovered in which textword lords it over counterpoint like master over servant: For the words, it is argued, are as much nobler than the accompanying harmonic system as the soul is nobler than the body.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
5. “I felt like an animal, and animals don’t know sin, do they?” - Jess C. Scott
6. “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
7. “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
8. “An active mind cannot exist in an inactive body.” - George S. Patton Jr.
9. “My bottom is my deliquent daughter. I lavish praise upon her cheeks when she's well behaved and when she gets out of control, I pretend she isn't mine.” - Anna Johnson
10. “I am an empty mind with an empty body and with an empty soul. I am neither haunting for anything nor something.” - Santosh Kalwar
11. “My body is an ugly masterpiece that lives off the beauty of sound.” - Chad Sugg
12. “Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.” - Maurice Merleau-Ponty
13. “People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.” - Kurt Vonnegut
14. “It is as though we are understanding now what (William) Blake intuited, the senses were, in Eden, spread over the whole being. It might seem, then, that our bodies still live in Eden, but our minds refuse to know it.” - Peter Redgrove
15. “I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?” - Jess C. Scott
16. “I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited and harmful image of people. It thus impedes a broader social acceptance of what someone, or a group of people, might actually be like.” - Jess C. Scott
17. “A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement” - Jess C. Scott
18. “And so I was scared. I was scared of my own sexual hunger, which felt so secretive and uncharted, and I was scared of the sexual hunger of boys, which felt so vivid and overt, and I was terribly uncertain of the relationships between sex and power and value, which seemed so merged and hard to tease apart. In the midst of all that, I didn't exactly loathe my body, or feel ashamed of it, but I was deeply ashamed of my fear, which felt disabling and immature and woefully, painfully uncool, a terrible secret, evidence of some profound failing and ignorance on my part. Other girls, or so I imagined, knew what to do, how to use their power, how to derive pleasure from it, and in contrast, I felt not only freakish but isolated, as though I was standing outside a vital, defining loop.” - Caroline Knapp
19. “When a man touches a woman's body, he is not just touching her body. It goes MUCH DEEPER than that for a woman. He is touching parts of her soul-parts as diverse as how she feels about being a grandmother some day, to what is her favorite ice cream, to how much she loves her pet, and to her opinion of how the current President is governing. The man wants a sexual encounter and love is far from his mind; she desires permanence, commitment, safety, and security.” - Jim Anderson
20. “My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.HAMLET The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing -GUILDENSTERN A thing my lord?HAMLET Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!” - William Shakespeare
21. “Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.” - William Blake
22. “Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison.” - Ann Brashares
23. “She felt like parts of her soul were missing, had left her body long ago. It had happened not in Greece three months ago, but long before that. It was in Greece that she'd realized those parts had left her and were not coming back.” - Ann Brashares
24. “Nakamura Tempu Sensei viewed the mind as a segment of the body that could not be seen and the body as the element of the mind that was observable. He also likened the mind and body to a stream, with the mind as the source flowing down to the body. Whatever we drop in the stream will be carried down by the current. In like manner, our thoughts will influence the body and our well being.” - H.E. Davey
25. “On a long flight, after periods of crisis and many hours of fatigue, mind and body may become disunited until at times they seem completely different elements, as though the body were only a home with which the mind has been associated but by no means bound. Consciousness grows independent of the ordinary senses. You see without assistance from the eyes, over distances beyond the visual horizon. There are moments when existence appears independent even of the mind. The importance of physical desire and immediate surroundings is submerged in the apprehension of universal values.For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world. My body requires no attention. It's not hungry. It's neither warm or cold. It's resigned to being left undisturbed. Why have I troubled to bring it here? I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet. This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels. It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I've gone through make possible.Then what am I – the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation? There are moments when the two appear inseparable, and others when they could be cut apart by the merest flash of light.While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds. It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone.” - Charles A. Lindbergh
26. “In some warped way, having an embalmed body with us made perfect sense.” - Tahir Shah
27. “In a swamp, as in meditation, you begin to glimpse how elusive, how inherently insubstantial, how fleeting our thoughts are, our identities. There is magic in this moist world, in how the mind lets go, slips into sleepy water, circles and nuzzles the banks of palmetto and wild iris, how it seeps across dreams, smears them into the upright world, rots the wood of treasure chests, welcomes the body home.” - Barbara Hurd
28. “Do you have any idea who Erin was kissing?""Yeah, so we'll brush out teeth really, really thoroughly afterwards," I said, bumping her nose with mine gently. I wasn't going to let anyone spoil this moment.” - Stacey Kade
29. “Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.” - Markus Zusak
30. “The word God can mean whatever you believe it to mean, for me it is the conscious stream of life from which we all come, and to which we can stayconnected throughout our lives as a source of peace, wisdom, love, support, knowing, inspiration, vitality, security, balance, and inner strength.I think that awareness is paramount, because in awareness we gain understanding, which then enables us to regain our feeling of empowerment.We need to feel empowered to make our choices conciously, about how to deal with changes in life, rather than reacting in fear (which tends to make us blind and weak).If we are aware, we can be realistic yet postive, and we can properly focus our intentions.Awareness can be quite sensual (which can add to your sense of feeling empowered). Think about how your body moves as you live your life, how amazing it is; think about nature, observe the intricate beautiful details of natural thngs, and of things we create, and breathe deeply to soak it all in.. Focus on the taste of food, the feel of textures in cloth, the feel of you partner's hand in yours; smell the sea breeze, listen to the wind in the trees, witness the colours of the leaves, the children playing; and be thankful for this life we are experiencing - this life we can all help to keep wonderful. Feel the wonder of being alive flood into you anytime you want, by taking a deep breath and letting the experience of these things fill you, even just by remembering.We all have that same stream of life within us, so you are a part of everything. Each one of us has the power to make a difference to everything.Breathe in that vital connection to the life source and sensual beauty everywhere, Feel loved and strong.” - jay woodman
31. “If it weren't for the unconventionality of my desires, my mind might never have been forced to reckon with my body.” - Alison Bechdel
32. “Le jugement du corps vaut bien celui de l'esprit et le corps recule devant l'anéantissement. Nous prenons l'habitude de vivre avant d'acquérir celle de penser.” - Albert Camus
33. “Cette encombrante enveloppe qu'il lui fallait laver, remplir, réchauffer au coin du feu ou sous la toison d'une bête morte, coucher le soir comme un enfant ou comme un vieillard imbécile, servait contre lui d'otage à la nature entière et, pis encore, à la société des hommes.(L'abîme)” - Marguerite Yourcenar
34. “I wanted her body and soul, but body first.” - Philip Sington
35. “Mind and body are in many ways opposite from each other, and mind and body must each act according to its own principles. Nonetheless, while the mind and body are different in disposition, they are complementary opposites that form a single whole. For us to sustain mind and body harmony, and function as whole human beings, we need to discover the actual nature of the mind’s characteristics.” - H.E. Davey Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation
36. “Your body is the house you grew up in. How dare you try to burn it to the ground.” - Sierra DeMulder
37. “Bioenergetics is an adventure in self-discovery. It differs from similar explorations into the nature of the self by attempting to understand the human personality in terms of the human body. Most previous explorations focused their investigations on the mind.” - Alexander Lowen
38. “We did not learn how to feel or experience our bodies, how to appreciate our own strengths, how to value or respect or understand the packages we came in. Instead, we learned how to look at them, to pair sexuality with desirability, to measure the worth of our bodies by their capacity to elicit admiration from others.” - Caroline Knapp
39. “If we deny the need for thought, Moneo, as some do, we lose the powers of reflection; we cannot define what our senses report. If we deny the flesh, we unwheel the vehicle which bears us. But if we deny emotion, we lose all touch with our internal universe. It was emotions which I missed the most.” - Frank Herbert
40. “The lingerie department is the only one that she can reach in her wheelchair. Nevertheless, she is fired the next day because of complaints that a woman who is so obviously not sexually attractive selling alluring nightgowns makes customers uncomfortable. Daunted by her dismissal, she seeks consolation in the arms of the young manager and soon finds herself pregnant. Upon learningof this news, he leaves her for anondisabled woman with a fullerbustline and better homemaking skills in his inaccessible kitchen.” - Rosemarie Garland Thomson
41. “Cemeteries are full of unfulfilled dreams... countless echoes of 'could have' and 'should have'… countless books unwritten… countless songs unsung... I want to live my life in such a way that when my body is laid to rest, it will be a well needed rest from a life well lived, a song well sung, a book well written, opportunities well explored, and a love well expressed.” - Steve Maraboli
42. “Love yourself enough to take care of your health of mind, body, and soul as a top priority, then you'lll be fit to face anything.” - jay woodman
43. “The neural basis for the self, as I see it, resides with the continuous reactivation of at least two sets of representations. One set concerns representations of key events in an individual's autobiography, on the basis of which a notion of identity can be reconstructed repeatedly, by partial activation in topologically organized sensory maps. ... In brief, the endless reactivation of updated images about our identity (a combination of memories of the past and of the planned future) constitutes a sizable part of the state of self as I understand it.The second set of representations underlying the neural self consists of the primordial representations of an individual's body ... Of necessity, this encompasses background body states and emotional states. The collective representation of the body constitute the basis for a "concept" of self, much as a collection of representations of shape, size, color, texture, and taste can constitute the basis for the concept of orange.” - António R. Damásio
44. “There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'stBut in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring [making music] to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls,But whilst this muddy vesture of decayDoth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it.” - William Shakespeare