Quote

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

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Henri Bergson
Age: 81 †
Born: 1859
Born: October 18
Died: 1941
Died: January 4
Philosopher
Professor
Sociologist
Paris
France
Henri-Louis Bergson
H. Bergson
Henry Bergson
Henri Louis Bergson
Berxon
Persons
Fail
Stamps
Person
Laughter
Bores
Must
Kindness
Directed
Avenges
Make
Failing
Intended
Corrective
Would
Objects
Sympathy
Humiliate
Liberty
Impression
Stamp
Taken
Object
Bore
Society
Painful
Liberties

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We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.
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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 varying the manufacture.
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In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.
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I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment
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One can always reason with reason.
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It is of man's essence to create materially and morally, to fabricate things and to fabricate himself. Homo faber is the definition I propose ... Homo faber, Homo sapiens, I pay my respects to both, for they tend to merge.
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There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.
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Realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and it is only through idealism that we resume contact with reality.
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Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.
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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.
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The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.
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Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it.
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There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.
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And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.
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The vital spirit. L'élan vital
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There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
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The motive power of democracy is love
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When it is said that an object occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories, and that in this sense it pervades them, although it does not itself come into view.
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