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In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.

Henri Bergson

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
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.
HENRI BERGSON

Boredom Director Humiliate Impression Kindness Laughter Object Pain Society Sympathy
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 urging the manufacture.
HENRI BERGSON

Artificial Intelligence Manufacture Original Willing
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
One can always reason with reason.
HENRI BERGSON

Oneself Reason
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
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
Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words.
HENRI BERGSON

Expression Ideas Ourselves True Word
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
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
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
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 only cure for vanity is laughter. And the only fault that’s laughable is vanity.
HENRI BERGSON

Errors Laughter Mistake Vanity
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
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

In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.

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In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.

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