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

An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.
Henri Bergson

And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.
Henri Bergson

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

Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.
Henri Bergson

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.
Henri Bergson

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

I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body: they transmit movement to it.
Henri Bergson

In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; 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.
Henri Bergson

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


In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.
Henri Bergson

In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.
Henri Bergson

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

Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.
Henri Bergson

It seems that laughter needs an echo.
Henri Bergson

Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.
Henri Bergson

Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.
Henri Bergson

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.
Henri Bergson

Sex appeal is the keynote of our civilization.
Henri Bergson

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