In vertebrate animals, flesh is the colloquial term for biological tissue which consists of skeletal muscles and fat as opposed to bones, viscera and integuments. Flesh may be used as food, in which case it commonly is called meat.
Famous quotes containing the word flesh:
“The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“If the heart beguiles itself in its choice [of a wife], and imagination will give excellencies which are not the portion of flesh and blood:Mwhen the dream is over, and we awake in the morning, it matters little whether ‘tis Rachael or Leah,—be the object what it will, as it must be on the earthly side ... of perfection,—it will fall short of the work of fancy, whose existence is in the clouds.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)