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Realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and it is only through idealism that we resume contact with reality.

Henri Bergson

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
HENRI BERGSON

Correct Force Laughter Prevent
When it is said that an object occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories.
HENRI BERGSON

Image Memories Object Perception Soul Space Understand
I believe I experience creativity at every moment of my life.
HENRI BERGSON

Believe Creativity Experience Life Moments Myself
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
And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.
HENRI BERGSON

Body Influence Movement Myself Return
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
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
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.
HENRI BERGSON

Character Compensation Intelligence Man
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
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
Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.
HENRI BERGSON

Force Genius Humanity Knowledge Learning
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
Intuition is a method of feeling one’s way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it.
HENRI BERGSON

Expression Feeling Heart Intellectual Unique
In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.
HENRI BERGSON

Correct Humiliate Intention Laughter Neighbor Ourselves
The only cure for vanity is laughter. And the only fault that’s laughable is vanity.
HENRI BERGSON

Errors Laughter Mistake Vanity
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
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
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

Appearance Definition Laughter Oneself Sound
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
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
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
There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.
HENRI BERGSON

Day Language Philosophy
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
One can always reason with reason.
HENRI BERGSON

Oneself Reason
Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.
HENRI BERGSON

Brain Known Question Reason Science Wisdom
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

Realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and it is only through idealism that we resume contact with reality.

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Realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and it is only through idealism that we resume contact with reality.

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Popular Authors

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