Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.

A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.

It is even a difficult thing for him [humans] to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does.

The fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.