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Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another.

Henri Bergson

The universe… is a machine for the making of gods.
HENRI BERGSON

God Machine Universe
Sex-appeal is the keynote of our whole civilization.
HENRI BERGSON

Appearance Civilization Sex
The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.
HENRI BERGSON

Dreams Future Hope Ideas Possession Pregnant Reality
Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate, it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness.
HENRI BERGSON

Boredom Director Humiliate Impression Kindness Laughter Object Pain Society Sympathy
It is the very essence of intelligence to coordinate means with a view to a remote end, and to undertake what it does not feel absolutely sure of carrying out.
HENRI BERGSON

Carry Essence Feeling Intelligence View
The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.
HENRI BERGSON

Movement River Source Stream Wind
I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.
HENRI BERGSON

Act Action Man Myself Thinking
The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.
HENRI BERGSON

Emotion Feeling Nature Origin Presence Religion
I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body : they transmit movement to it.
HENRI BERGSON

Image Influence Movement Myself Sight
If reality impacted directly on our senses and our consciousness, if we could have direct communication between the material world and ourselves, art would be unnecessary.
HENRI BERGSON

Art Communication Direct Necessary Reality
The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.
HENRI BERGSON

Effect Past Present Reason
However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.
HENRI BERGSON

Complication Imagination Kind Laughter Reality
There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.
HENRI BERGSON

Guard Laughter Ourselves
Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.
HENRI BERGSON

Group Laughter Ourselves
ACT as men of thought; THINK as men of action.
HENRI BERGSON

Act Action Man Thinking
And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.
HENRI BERGSON

Body Influence Movement Myself Return
There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.
HENRI BERGSON

Attention Different Life Man Mental Ourselves Remove Tone
The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.
HENRI BERGSON

Conscious Exploration Mindset Task Work
To ease another’s burden, help to carry it.
HENRI BERGSON

Burden Carry Generosity Help
You will obtain a vision of matter that is perhaps fatiguing for your imagination, but pure and stripped of what the requirements of life make you add to it in external perception.
HENRI BERGSON

Add Matter Perception Requirement Strip Vision Yourself
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.
HENRI BERGSON

Action Calculation Creation Greatness Move
Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.
HENRI BERGSON

Construction Faculty Instrument Intelligence Organization Perfection
I believe I experience creativity at every moment of my life.
HENRI BERGSON

Believe Creativity Experience Life Moments Myself
When we make the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in no sense the condition of a perception, we place the perceived images of things outside the image of our body, and thus replace perception within the things themselves.
HENRI BERGSON

Action Beginning Body Image Place State
In just the same way the thousands of successive positions of a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic attitude, which our eye perceives, which art reproduces, and which becomes for everyone the image of a man who runs.
HENRI BERGSON

Art Attitude Eyes Image Ourselves Reproduction Run Success
In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely urging the manufacture.
HENRI BERGSON

Artificial Intelligence Manufacture Original Willing
Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.
HENRI BERGSON

Intellectual Necessary Reality

Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another.

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Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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