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

Henri Bergson

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
In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.
HENRI BERGSON

Correct Humiliate Intention Laughter Neighbor Ourselves
Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
HENRI BERGSON

Correct Force Laughter Prevent
To ease another’s burden, help to carry it.
HENRI BERGSON

Burden Carry Generosity Help
And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.
HENRI BERGSON

Body Influence Movement Myself Return
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
In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.
HENRI BERGSON

Past Preserve 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 only cure for vanity is laughter. And the only fault that’s laughable is vanity.
HENRI BERGSON

Errors Laughter Mistake Vanity
Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed.
HENRI BERGSON

Live Open Register Time
Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.
HENRI BERGSON

Group Laughter Ourselves
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
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
Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.
HENRI BERGSON

Mystic Popular Religion Science
I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.
HENRI BERGSON

Act Action Man Myself Thinking
Divine love is not something belonging to God: it is God Himself.
HENRI BERGSON

Belong Divine God Himself Love
There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.
HENRI BERGSON

Guard Laughter Ourselves
Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.
HENRI BERGSON

Association Division Element Life Process
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
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
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
One can always reason with reason.
HENRI BERGSON

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

Character Intelligence Life Natural
An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.
HENRI BERGSON

Analyse Intuition Rest
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
HENRI BERGSON

Change Creation End Existence Maturity
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.
HENRI BERGSON

Borrow Freedom Movement Restore Spirit

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

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

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Popular Authors

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