“To perceive means to immobilize. To say this is to say that we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.”

Is it astonishing that, like children trying to catch smoke by closing their hands, philosophers so often see the object they would grasp fly before them?

Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.

Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed.

Divine love is not something belonging to God: it is God Himself.

It seems that laughter needs an echo.

Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.

There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.

Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom.

Action on the move creates its own route, creates to a very great extent the conditions under which it is to be fulfilled and thus baffles all calculation.

We regard intelligence as man’s main characteristic and we know that there is no superiority which intelligence cannot confer on us, no inferiority for which it cannot compensate.

There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.

One can always reason with reason.

Art has no other object than to set aside the symbols of practical utility, the generalities that are conventionally and socially accepted, everything in fact which masks reality from us, in order to set us face to face with reality itself.

We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.

Selecting your next challenge in life, choose one that is meaningful and will demand your complete concentration.

If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one’s conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.

Most people are too fretful, they worry to much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it’s time.

Success is meaningless without fulfilment – both begin within.

This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.

Scenery without solace is meaningless.

Living in a chronic state of unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is most beautiful and meaningful in our lives.

Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.