Henri Bergson Quotes

Think like a man of action act like a man of thought.

The present contains nothing more than the past and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.

To exist is to change to change is to mature to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

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.

Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter.

[Duration is] the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former state.