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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

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
Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.
HENRI BERGSON

Character Intelligence Life Natural
To perceive means to immobilize. To say this is to say that we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.
HENRI BERGSON

Act Meaning Perception Talk
It is emotion that drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles.
HENRI BERGSON

Drive Emotion Forward Obstacle
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.
HENRI BERGSON

Action Artist Expression Freedom
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
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
There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.
HENRI BERGSON

Day Language Philosophy
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
HENRI BERGSON

Creation Expression Greatness Joy
It seems that laughter needs an echo.
HENRI BERGSON

Echo Laughter Need
I believe I experience creativity at every moment of my life.
HENRI BERGSON

Believe Creativity Experience Life Moments Myself
Divine love is not something belonging to God: it is God Himself.
HENRI BERGSON

Belong Divine God Himself Love
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 varying the manufacture.
HENRI BERGSON

Artificial Feature Intelligence Manufacture Special Tools
And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.
HENRI BERGSON

Body Influence Movement Myself Return
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
In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.
HENRI BERGSON

Correct Humiliate Intention Laughter Neighbor Ourselves
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
Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized… we shall have war.
HENRI BERGSON

Condition Population Ration Reproduction War
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
Sex-appeal is the keynote of our whole civilization.
HENRI BERGSON

Appearance Civilization Sex
An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.
HENRI BERGSON

Analyse Intuition Rest
Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words.
HENRI BERGSON

Expression Ideas Ourselves True Word
The universe… is a machine for the making of gods.
HENRI BERGSON

God Machine Universe
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?
HENRI BERGSON

Astonish Children Fly Object Philosophy Try
For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided.
HENRI BERGSON

Development Direction Essence Form Growth Life
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.
HENRI BERGSON

Acceptance Art Face Fact Generality Object Practical Reality Social Symbol
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

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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