The perceived world is the always-presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value, and all existence.
Maurice Merleau-PontyOur own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system.
Maurice Merleau-PontyWe should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven.
Maurice Merleau-PontyThe photograph keeps open the instants which the onrush of time closes up forthwith; it destroys the overtaking, the overlapping, the metamorphosis of time.
Maurice Merleau-PontyThe body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art.
Maurice Merleau-PontyOur view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. the spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty