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

Henri Bergson

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
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
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
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
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
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 motive power of democracy is love.
HENRI BERGSON

Democracy Love Motive Power
Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
HENRI BERGSON

Correct Force Laughter Prevent
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
There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.
HENRI BERGSON

Guard Laughter Ourselves
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
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
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
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
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

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

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

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