...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing.

The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.

Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.

Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.