The universe... is a machine for the making of gods. Henri Bergson More Quotes by Henri Bergson More Quotes From 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 creatingessencelife In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically. Henri Bergson philosophicalrealitypast 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. Henri Bergson visionperceptionimagination It is the very essence of intelligence to coordinate means with a view to a remote end, and to undertake what it does not feel absolutely sure of carrying out. Henri Bergson essenceviewsmean When we make the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in no sense the condition of a perception, we place the perceived images of things outside the image of our body, and thus replace perception within the things themselves. Henri Bergson bodyperceptionhouse Action on the move creates its own route, creates to a very great extent the conditions under which it is to be fulfilled and thus baffles all calculation. Henri Bergson habitactionmoving All the translations of a poem in all possible languages may add nuance to nuance and, by a kind of mutual retouching, by correcting one another, may give an increasingly faithful picture of the poem they translate, yet they will never give the inner meaning of the original. Henri Bergson poetryfaithgiving Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed. Henri Bergson registerumpirestime I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body : they transmit movement to it. Henri Bergson philosophicalmovementbody It is emotion that drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles. Henri Bergson spiteobstaclesemotion Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division. Henri Bergson philosophicaldoelife The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions. Henri Bergson emotionnaturemen To perceive means to immobilize. To say this is to say that we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself. Henri Bergson perceiveperceptionmean An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique andconsequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known. Henri Bergson intuitionuniqueorder There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language. Henri Bergson everydaylanguagephilosophy Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks. Henri Bergson smilelaughterhappiness One can always reason with reason. Henri Bergson mathematicianreason Realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and it is only through idealism that we resume contact with reality. Henri Bergson realismsoulreality An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. Henri Bergson philosophicalintuitionanalysis 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 tryingchildrenhands
