NUDITY QUOTES II

quotations about nudity

Here is nudity, you say (at least this is how I'm reading it right now), nudity which is not like a knife and not like a wound. Exposed nudity, vulnerable, a little ashamed and merciful. Like yours exactly, the imperfect nudity of a woman my age. Look, you tell me my nudity is a little unsure of itself, my body is being assisted along by all kinds of little tricks to conceal its defects--but is willing to immediately give up those tricks for whoever wishes to look upon it with an appreciative eye. Here is nudity that uses clothes (you keep saying?), blouses, dresses, bras, belts, in the same way people use words, "their" words, but you can come and touch, feel it; here is nudity that can also heal.

DAVID GROSSMAN

Be My Knife: A Novel


What a frail, easily hurt, rather pathetic thing a human body is, naked; somehow a little unfinished, incomplete!

D. H. LAWRENCE

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Tags: D. H. Lawrence


I brought a picture with me that I had at home, of a girl in a swing with a castle and pretty blue bubbles in the background, to hang in my room, but that nurse here said the girl was naked from the waist up and not appropriate. You know, I've had that picture for fifty years and I never knew she was naked. If you ask me, I don't think the old men they've got here can see well enough to notice that she's bare-breasted. But, this is a Methodist home, so she's in the closet with my gallstones.

FANNIE FLAGG

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


Nudity quickly becomes unremarkable when generally practiced.

MARTHA NUSSBAUM

Hiding from Humanity

Tags: Martha Nussbaum


I thoroughly enjoy seeing a beautifully proportioned nude male. So did Michelangelo and Rodin. But if the male is blubbery, he should keep his beer barrel to himself and not be a portly polluter.

JUNE LOCKHART

The Palm Beach Post, October 5, 1972


The beauty of a naked body is felt only by the dressed races.

FERNANDO PESSOA

The Book of Disquiet

Tags: Fernando Pessoa


Art disguised as nudity is viable (Genet), but nudity disguised as art becomes at best a joke (Charlotte Moorman), at worst a bore (Che!).

NED ROREM

Critical Affairs: A Composer's Journal


What nudity therefore reveals is its own impudence; what is shown in it is not so much what is secret, as the betrayal of the secret, which is to say profanation itself.

RAOUL MOATI

Levinas and the Night of Being: A Guide to Totality and Infinity


What shows itself in erotic nudity is less something revealed as it is treason against a secret; it is the profanation of that which is essentially hidden and mysterious.

RAOUL MOATI

Levinas and the Night of Being: A Guide to Totality and Infinity


The terrible poetry of human nudity, I understand it at last, I who tremble for the first time in trying to read it with blasé eyes.

RACHILDE

Monsieur Venus: A Materialist Novel


To be naked is to be without disguises.

JOHN BERGER

Ways of Seeing

Tags: John Berger


Nudity is an essential part of all primitive agricultural rites ... By unveiling the body, and especially the sexual organs, women more effectually represented the goddess of fertility, and more effectually as her representatives, or through their own powers, magically conveyed fertility to the fields.

JOHN ARNOTT MACCULLOCH

The Religion of the Ancient Celts

Tags: John Arnott MacCulloch


Women who use public nudity for social commentary, art and protest are myth-busting along many dimensions: active, not passive; strong not vulnerable; together, not isolated; public, not private; and, usually, angry, not alluring. The threat that female toplessness and self-articulated nudity poses is culturally defined and can be culturally redefined so that people recognize that the offense to morality is misogyny, not nudity.

SORAYA CHEMALY

"Why Female Nudity Isn't Obscene, But Is Threatening to a Sexist Status Quo", Huffington Post, June 22, 2014


The nudity of that feminine body had risen into her face, the body had reabsorbed it, as nature reabsorbs forsaken gardens.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

The Reprieve

Tags: Jean-Paul Sartre


I find people better looking without clothes than with clothes. You can go to a gym and go to a steam room and you see someone and think, He's really handsome. Then he puts on his clothes. Some weird pants. A thumb ring. Some weird socks. And it's gone!

TOM FORD

Vanity Fair, March 2006

Tags: Tom Ford


In fact, research suggests that children who have seen their parents nude do not grow up to be emotionally scarred, but instead are more likely to be accepting of their own bodies and comfortable with their own sexuality.

HOLLY ROBINSON

"The Naked Truth on Family Nudity", American Baby, December 2004


A man who can't eat dinner naked on a leather couch is little better than a slave.

JOSH OZERSKY

Eat Like a Man


Why is exposing the world to non-sexualized female nudity important? The real question about female nudity isn't why anyone would want to show or see women's breasts if they're not titillating. The real question is about who has the right to say what they're for, where and when they can be seen and by whom. That's about power.

SORAYA CHEMALY

"Why Female Nudity Isn't Obscene, But Is Threatening to a Sexist Status Quo", Huffington Post, June 22, 2014


Religious strictures are often the source of attitudes toward nudity. Society urges the wearing of clothing partially as a means of controlling the powerful sexual urges that are feared will be released by nudity, causing chaotic behavior.

PATRICIA GARFIELD

The Universal Dream Key

Tags: Patricia Garfield


I think onstage nudity is disgusting, shameful, and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.

SHELLEY WINTERS

attributed, The Audience Book of Theater Quotations