Henri Bergson Quotes

Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon then from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins the journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of the crowd, and by choosing knowledge over veils of ignorance.

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

The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.

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

I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.

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

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

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.

It is emotion that drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles.

To drive out the darkness, bring in the light.

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

Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.

Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.

If reality impacted directly on our senses and our consciousness, if we could have direct communication between the material world and ourselves, art would be unnecessary.

The universe... is a machine for the making of gods.

Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed.

The only cure for vanity is laughter. And the only fault that's laughable is vanity.

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.

ACT as men of thought; THINK as men of action.

... divine love is not something belonging to God: it is God Himself.

To perceive means to immobilize. To say this is to say that we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.

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.

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.