28 Feb 40 Quotes to Help You Love and Embrace Your Body, Just The Way It Is

One of the most essential elements that goes into loving, or being loved, is the experience of being seen.

Not seeing something as it once was, or as it “should be.” But seeing it as it truly is, right now, in this irreplaceable miracle of a moment.

This unwavering act of presence and understanding is the most powerful gift we could ever give to someone… and, perhaps even more importantly, it is the most magnificent, life-affirming gift we could ever give to ourselves.

As Lifebook Member Dr. Joel Wade puts it in his moving post on love and visibility, “Love is fundamentally about seeing, hearing, and knowing another human being deeply. We cannot do that from within our own idealistic fantasy.”

This goes for loving ourselves as well.

To truly see, hear and know ourselves deeply, we must come out from behind our veil of forgetfulness, and look into our own true eyes. We must stand in simple understanding of ourselves, right here, right now. We must see ourselves, not with our eyes, but with our hearts… with our entire being.

We must create a benevolent cycle of visibility and trust within ourselves.

That’s when we get to feel that great resonance; that sublime emotion of being touched by the power of self-love and embracement, letting it fill us up from the inside out.

And, ironically, this is what constitutes true, radiant beauty.

In honor of this month’s Health and Fitness theme, and our personal quests to realize the power and potential of the glorious human form, here are 40 quotes to help you love and embrace your body, just the way it is…

“To love yourself as you are is a miracle,
and to see yourself is to have found yourself, for now.
And now is all we have, and love is who we are.”
– Anne Lamott

“Real beauty isn’t about symmetry or weight or makeup;
it’s about looking life right in the face
and seeing all its magnificence reflected in your own.”
– Valerie Monroe

“When we’re awake in our bodies and sense, the world comes alive.
Wisdom, creativity, and love are discovered as we relax and awaken through our bodies.”
– Tara Brach

“How I feel about myself is more important than how I look.
Feeling confident, being comfortable in your skin –
that’s what really makes you beautiful.”
– Bobbi Brown

“I stand in awe of my body.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“When you’re always trying to conform to the norm, you lose your uniqueness,
which can be the foundation for your greatness.”
– Dale Archer

“Each individual body demands to be accepted on its own terms.”
– Gloria Steinem

“Beauty once seemed to me to be an accident of nature…
But now that I can see my life on my face,
I realize we earn the way we end up looking.
Time, it seems, gives us all a chance to really be beautiful.”
– Ann Curry

“Self love is respecting my beautiful body.
Yes it is beautiful. It was divinely designed especially for me.
A sacred creation for self knowledge which brings me limitless opportunities
to experience myself in each moment.”
– Michelle M McGrath

“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.”
– Jim Rohn

“You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved.
But you won’t discover this until you are willing to stop
banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself.
– Geneen Roth

“To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.”
– Simone de Beauvoir

“It’s never been true, not anywhere at any time,
that the value of a soul, of a human spirit,
is dependent on a number on a scale.
We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water
who need these physical vehicles to get around.
When we start defining ourselves
by that which can be measured or weighed,
something deep within us rebels.
We don’t want to EAT hot fudge sundaes
as much as we want our lives to BE hot fudge sundaes.
We want to come home to ourselves.”
– Geneen Roth

“No diet can substitute for the wisdom of your body.”
– Brooke Castillo

“I have a crumble baby belly, boobs are worse for wear after two kids…
I’m doing all right. I’m 33. I don’t look in the mirror and go, “Oh, I look fantastic!”
Of course I don’t. Nobody is perfect. I just don’t believe in perfection.
But I do believe in saying, “This is who I am and look at me not being perfect!”
I’m proud of that.”
– Kate Winslet

“I guess my mom raised me right. She was very celebratory of her body.
I never heard her once say, “I feel fat”.
Back when I was modeling, the first time I went to Italy,
I was having cappuccinos every day, and I gained 15 pounds.
And I felt gorgeous! I would take my clothes off in front of the mirror
and be like “Oh, I look like a woman”. And I felt beautiful,
and I never tried to lose it, because I loved it.”
– Christina Hendricks

“Your body is just a body. And just a body is already so very much.”
– Anne-Sophie Reinhardt

“Our bodies were printed as blank pages to be filled with the ink of our hearts.”
– Michael Biondi

“Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.”
– Evelyn Underhill

“I have a body,
but I am not my body.
I have a face,
but I am not my face.”
– Iyanla Vanzant

“Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering,
there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen

“Self-criticism is not “love,” and it is certainly not indifferent.
It’s a form of hatred. And when I name that,
when I see it for what it is (raw and uncomfortable and saddening),
when I refuse to sugar-coat self criticism, judgment, agitation,
and constantly trying to improve myself,
then I’m one quantum leap closer to freedom.”
– Danielle LaPorte

“Make choices that are loving for yourself –
with your diet, your relationships, and in speaking your loving truth –
that are in alignment with what you want to be doing.
When you see that in a person,
you are seeing their passion and fulfillment,
and that person feels good to you because they feel good to themselves.
I know that I feel good and I think that comes across on stage;
when I didn’t feel good before, I think that came across on stage.
– India Arie

“Real women are fat.
And thin.
And both, and neither,
and otherwise.”
– Hanne Blank

“She held herself until the sobs of the child inside subsided entirely.
I love you, she told herself. It will all be okay.”
– H. Raven Rose

“Lighten up on yourself. No one is perfect.
Gently accept your humanness.”
– Deborah Day

“Live your life and forget your age.”
– Norman Vincent Peale

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
– C.G. Jung

“The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and will smile at the other’s welcome.”
– Derek Walcott

“It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have,
that’s sitting right here right now… with its aches and its pleasures…
is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.”
– Pema Chodron

“Within my body are all the sacred places of the world,
and the most profound pilgrimage I can ever make
is within my own body.”
– Saraha

“If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred.”
– Walt Whitman

“Your body is a temple, but only if you treat it as one.”
– Astrid Alauda

“The body must be nourished, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
We’re spiritually starved in this culture- not underfed but undernourished.”
– Carol Hornig

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophies.”
– Friedrich Nietzche

“People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty
is realizing you are the beholder.”
– Salma Hayek

“You are whole already, perfect the way you are.
Your whole being is so much more complex,
so much more fragile, so much more subtle and intelligent
than a few days of dieting or a page of notes can portray.
Reducing your self-worth to the weight you’ve gained during the holidays,
or the goals you haven’t achieved in a year is ridiculous and lethal.”
– Anne-Sophie Reinhardt

“To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven.
Don’t wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now.”
– Alan Cohen

“Each cell in your body is a whole world in itself,
passing on genetic memories to the next generation of cells.
If only you took the time to really listen to your body,
you would find that it has a lot to tell you about the mystery of life.
In fact, you don’t have to travel any farther than into your body
to collide with the divine.”
– Chameli Ardagh

“I prayed for change, so I changed my mind.
I prayed for guidance and learned to trust myself.
I prayed for happiness and realized I am not my ego.
I prayed for peace and learned to accept others unconditionally.
I prayed for abundance and realized my doubt kept it out.
I prayed for wealth and realized it is my health.
I prayed for a miracle and realized I am the miracle.
I prayed for a soul mate and realized I am the one.
I prayed for love and realized it’s always knocking, but I have to allow it in.”
– Jackson Kiddard