'the utter, hopeless thwarting that was his blood and bones and flesh'

And was this where he was going to grow old? Would it all end in a room like this? He sat down on the bed and before him on the wall was the picture of the wolf standing with vaporized breath on a snow-covered hill above a lighted farm. Then the abeyant melancholy of the evening came over him. He sat with his shoulders slumped under the oppression of the room, under the impasse that was himself, the utter, hopeless thwarting that was his blood and bones and flesh. Afraid of a crisis beyond his capacity, he held himself in, his body absolutely still in the passing and fading whine and rumble of a truck. The blue and gold frame, the long cord hanging from the molding, the discolored gold tassel at its apex, all added to the feeling that he had seen the picture in some room in childhood. Though it filled him with despondency he did not think of taking it down . . .

—Leonard Gardner, Fat City (1969)

This Body of Mine

By what rule or manner can I bind this body of mine?...He is my helper and my enemy, my assistant and my opponent, a protector and a traitor. I am kind to him and he assaults me. If I wear him out he gets weak. If he has rest he becomes unruly. If I upset him he cannot stand it. If I mortify him I endanger myself. If I strike him down I have nothing left by which to acquire virtues. I embrace him. And I turn away from him. What is this mystery in me? What is the principle of this mixed nature of body and soul? How can I be my own friend and my own enemy?

—John Climacus, "On Chastity" in The Ladder of Divine Ascent (600)

'the multitudinous beauties of her body'

. . . And he began to discover her. He had an inkling of the vastness of the unknown sensual store of delights she was. With a passion of voluptuousness that made him dwell on each tiny beauty, in a kind of frenzy of enjoyment, he lit upon her: her beauty, the beauties, the separate, several beauties of her body.

He was quite ousted from himself, and sensually transported by that which he discovered in her. He was another man reveling over her. There was no tenderness, no love between them any more, only the maddening, sensuous lust for discovery and the insatiable, exorbitant gratification in the sensual beauties of her body. And she was a store, a store of absolute beauties that it drove him to contemplate. There was such a feast to enjoy, and he with only one man’s capacity.

He lived in a passion of sensual discovery with her for some time—it was a duel: no love, no words, no kisses even, only the maddening perception of beauty consummate, absolute through touch. He wanted to touch her, to discover her, maddeningly he wanted to know her. Yet he must not hurry, or he missed everything. He must enjoy one beauty at a time. And the multitudinous beauties of her body, the many little rapturous places, sent him mad with delight, and with desire to be able to know more, to have strength to know more. For all was there.

—D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915)

Only Half-Alive

Unprepossessing in appearance—small and so strikingly thin that his clothes shrouded rather than covered him; his close-cropped hair, and wide, heavily lipped mouth, and eyes sunk deep into darkened sockets, lent him a gauntly simian look—George Tyrrell suffered more or less constantly from a sharp sting in the flesh. Severe migraine headaches and their accompanying nausea left him often prostrate days on end, only "half-alive," as he put it, unable to abide any human contact. Sick to his stomach so much, he ate carelessly and seldom, reducing himself to a virtual state of malnutrition and thus further aggravating his illness. The doctors solemnly warned him that mental fatigue from overwork brought about the pain and the bilious attacks, and yet it was only work that afforded him any lasting relief.

—Marvin R. O'Connell, Critics on Trial (1994) 

A Man of Noble Breeding

Now against both these dangers there is one safeguard: not to exercise the soul without the body, nor yet the body without the soul, in order that both may hold their own and prove equally balanced and sound. So the mathematician or one who is intensely occupied with any other intellectual discipline must give his body its due meed by taking part in athletic training; while he who is industrious in molding his body must compensate his soul with her proper exercise in the cultivation of the mind and all higher education; so one may deserve to be called in the true sense a man of noble breeding.

—Plato, Timaeus (360 BC)

We must have bodies.

Just three weeks later the physicians of Louisville were at it again. They attempted to rob a grave at the State Asylum for the Insane in Anchorage, Kentucky, this time on behalf of the University of Louisville. "Yes, the party was sent out by us," a senior school official said. "We must have bodies, and if the State won't give them to us we must steal them. The winter classes were large and used up so many subjects that there are none for the spring classes." He saw no need to apologize. "The Asylum Cemetery has been robbed for years," he said, "and I doubt if there is a corpse in it. I tell you we must have bodies. You cannot make doctors without them, and the public must understand it. If we can't get them any other way we will arm the students with Winchester rifles and send them to protect the body-snatchers on their raids."

—Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City (2004)