Quotes from Henri Bergson

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

all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside.

Sans doute une chute est toujours une chute, mais autre chose est de se laisser choir dans un puits parce qu'on regardait n'importe où ailleurs, autre chose y tomber parce qu'on visait une étoile. C'est bien une étoile que Don Quichotte contemplait.

L'humanité gémit, à demi écrasée sous le poids des progrès qu'elle a faits. Elle ne sait pas assez que son avenir dépend d'elle.

Materiality begets oblivion.

Avouons notre ignorance, mais ne nous résignons pas à la croire définitive.

Social thought is unable not to keep its original structure.

For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating one's self endlessly.

All the pieces have been arranged with a view to the best possible funk

we shall not dwell for the present on the effort to delve down to the depths of our being. If possible at all, it is exceptional: and it is on the surface, at the point where it inserts itself into the close-woven tissue of other exteriorised personalities, that our ego generally finds its point of attachment; its solidity lies in this solidarity.

psychical life is neither unity nor multiplicity, that it transcends both the mechanical and the intellectual, mechanism and finalism having meaning only where there is "distinct multiplicity," "spatiality," and consequently assemblage of pre-existing parts: "real duration" signifies both undivided continuity and creation.

Religion is a defensive reaction of nature against the dissolvent power of intelligence.

Darwin's theory of evolution pointed to the conclusion that flux (or becoming), not being, is the essence of reality. Though

Nous ne voyons pas les choses mêmes ; nous nous bornons, le plus souvent, à lire des étiquettes collées sur elles.

Il suffit que nous bouchions nos oreilles au son de la musique, dans un salon où l'on danse, pour que les danseurs nous paraissent aussitôt ridicules. Combien d'actions humaines résisteraient à une épreuve de ce genre?

usually when we speak of time we think of the measurement of duration, and not of duration itself. But this duration which science eliminates, and which is so difficult to conceive and express, is what one feels and lives.

Matter and mind have this in common, that certain superficial agitations of matter are expressed in our minds, superficially, in the form of sensations; and on the other hand, the mind, in order to act upon the body, must descend little by little toward matter and become spatialized. It follows that the intelligence, although turned toward external things, can still be exerted on things internal, provided that it does not claim to plunge too deeply.

In reality, life is no more made of physico-chemical elements than a curve is composed of straight lines.

le cerveau ne détermine pas la pensée ; et par conséquent la pensée, en grande partie du moins, est indépendante du cerveau.

By the sole fact of being accomplished, reality casts its shadow behind it into the indefinitely distant past: it thus seems to have been pre-existent to its own realization, in the form of a possible. From this results an error which vitiates our conception of the past; from this arises our claim to anticipate the future on every occasion

En ce point est quelque chose de simple, d'infiniment simple, de si extraordinairement simple que le philosophe n'a jamais réussi à le dire. Et c'est pourquoi il a parlé toute sa vie.

En ce sens, on pourrait dire que la nature obtient souvent elle-même des succès de caricaturiste. Dans le mouvement par lequel elle a fendu cette bouche, rétréci ce menton, gonflé cette joue, il semble qu'elle ait réussi à aller jusqu'au bout de sa grimace, trompant la surveillance modératrice d'une force plus raisonnable. Nous rions alors d'un visage qui est à lui-même pour ainsi dire, sa propre caricature.

O rígido, o já feito, o mecânico, contrariamente ao maleável, ao continuadamente cambiante, ao vivo, o desvio contrariamente à atenção, enfim, o automatismo contrastando com a atividade livre, eis em suma o que o riso ressalta e pretende corrigir.

Noi facem deosebirea dintre o capr? ?i o oaie; dar oare putem distinge o capr? de o alt? capr? sau o oaie de o alt? oaie?