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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

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
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
Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.
HENRI BERGSON

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

Mystic Popular Religion Science
A situation is always comic if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings.
HENRI BERGSON

Cosmos Different Independent Meaning Quite Series Situation
One can always reason with reason.
HENRI BERGSON

Oneself Reason
There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.
HENRI BERGSON

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

Character Intelligence Life Natural
In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.
HENRI BERGSON

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

Correct Force Laughter Prevent
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
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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