skin quotes

There was a faith-healer of Deal Who said,'Although pain isn't real, If I sit on a pin 22 And it punctures my skin, I dislike what I fancy I feel.'

-Anonymous
Collected in The Week-End Book (1925).

I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simplyat themercyofthereflexesthecolorofone'sskincaused in other people.

-James Arthur Baldwin
  Notes of a Native Son,'Notes of a Native Son'.

Le langage est une peau: je frotte mon langage contre l'autre. Language is a skin; I rub my language against another language.

- Roland Barthes
  Fragments d'un discours amoureux,'De  claration'.

Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.But put forththinehand now, and touchhisboneand his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Job 2:4^5.

I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Job19:20.

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Job19:25^6.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? thenmay yealso dogood, that areaccustomedto do evil.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Jeremiah13:23.

   As he drew near, he gazed upon the gate Ne'er to be entered more by him or Sin, With such a glance of supernatural hate, As made Saint Peter wish himself within; He pattered with his keys at a great rate, And sweated through his apostolic skin: Of course his perspiration was but ichor, Or some such other spiritual liquor.

-Rochdale
  The Vision of  Judgement, stanza 25.

So I lie, whose fount of pride, Dear distress, and joy allied, Is my somber flesh and skin, With the dark blood dammed within.

- Countee Cullen
  On These I Stand,'Heritage'.

Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin; And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  'Whispers of Immortality'.

   Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take the stonefromthestone, taketheskinfromthearm, takethe muscle from bone, and wash them.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  Murder in the Cathedral, pt.2.

The heart never knows the colour of the skin.

- Chief Dan George
  My Heart Soars.

You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, Of people whose skin is a different shade. You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate. You've got to be carefully taught.

- Oscar, II Hammerstein
  'You've Got to Be Carefully Taught', song from South Pacific (music by Richard Rodgers).

Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. 416

- A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
  'The Name and Nature of Poetry', Lecture at Cambridge, 9 May.

   Whenyouareskinning yourcustomers,youshould leave some skin on to grow so that you can skin them again.

- Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev
  Speech to British industrialists, May.

No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, theycan be taught to love, for love comesmore naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

- Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
  Long Walk to Freedom.

   Every man who comes to England is entitled to the protection of the English law, whatever oppression he may heretofore have suffered, and whatever may be the colour of his skin, whether it is black or whether it is white.

-William Murray, 1st Earl Mansfield
   Judgement on the Somersett slavery case, May.

A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade.

- Sylvia Plath
  'Lady Lazarus', published posthumously byTed Hughes (Ariel,1965).

   On a sofa upholstered in panther skin Mona did researches in original sin.

-William Plomer
  'Mews Flat Mona'.

   I have a horror of the word 'flesh', which has become so shopworn.Why not 'meat'whilethey're about it? What I like is skin, a young girl's skin that is pink and shows that she has a good circulation.

- Pierre Auguste Renoir
Quoted inJean Renoir Renoir, My Father (translated by R and D Weaver,1962).

And truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most on poetry.

- Sir Philip Sidney
  The Defence of Poetry.

For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes. For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life. For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him. For he is of the tribe of Tiger.

- Christopher Smart
^63  Of his cat Jeoffry. JubilateAgno, fragment B, l.719^22. (First published1939.)

But the skin of progress Masks, unknown, the spotted wolf of sameness.

-Wole pseudonym of Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka Soyinka
  The Lion and theJewel (published1962),'Night'.

The skin and shell of things Though fair are not Thy wish nor prayer but got My meer despair of wings.

- Henry Vaughan
  Silex Scintillans,'The Search'.

I have been told, both in approval and accusation, that I seemto loveall mycharacters.What Idoinwriting of any character istotry toenter intothemind, heart and skinof a human being who is not myself.Whether this happens to be a man ora woman, old or young, with skin blackor white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.

- Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of EudoraWelty, preface.

A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudistnothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin.

- E(lwyn) B(rooks) White
  Letter to Corona Macheiner,11 Jun.