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:
“Heat, ma’am! It was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)