Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic

“Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter.””

— Henri Bergson

“Might not certain vices have the same relation to character that the rigidity of a fixed idea as to intellect? Whether as a moral kink or a crooked twist given to the will, vice has often the appearance of a curvature for the soul. Doubtless there are vices into which the soul plunges deeply with all its pregnant potency, which it rejuvenates and drags along with it into a moving circle of reincarnations. Those are tragic vices. But the vice capable of making us comic is, on the contrary, that which is brought from without, like a ready-made frame into which we are to step. It lends us its own rigidity instead of borrowing from us our flexibility. We do not render it more complicated; on the contrary, it simplifies us. Here, as we shall see later in the concluding section of this study, lies the essential difference between comedy and drama. A drama, even when portraying passions or vices that bear a name, so completely incorporates them that the person is forgotten, their general characteristics effaced, and we no longer think of them at all, but rather of the person in whom they are assimilated; hence, the title of a drama can seldom be anything else than a proper noun. On the other hand, many comedies have a common noun as their title: L'Avare, Le Joueur etc.””

— Henri Bergson

“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.””

— Henri Bergson

“A flexible vice may not be so easy to ridicule as a rigid virtue.””

— Henri Bergson

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

— Henri Bergson

“Useful professions are clearly meant for the public, but those whose utility is more dubious can only justify their existence by assuming that the public is meant for them.””

— Henri Bergson

“There is no pool, however, which has not some dead leaves floating on its surface, no human soul upon which there do not settle habits that make it rigid against itself by making it rigid against others.””

— Henri Bergson

“Il n'y a pas de comique en dehors de ce qui est proprement humain. Un paysage pourra être beau, gracieux, sublime, insignifiant ou laid ; il ne sera jamais risible. On rira d'un animal, mais parce qu'on aura surpris chez lui une attitude d'homme ou une expression humaine. On rira d'un chapeau; mais ce qu'on raille alors, ce n'est pas le morceau de feutre ou de paille, c'est la forme que les hommes lui ont donnée, c'est le caprice humain dont il a pris le moule. Comment un fait aussi important, dans sa simplicité, n'a-t-il pas fixé davantage l'attention des philosophes? Plusieurs ont défini l'homme "un animal qui sait rire". Ils auraient aussi bien pu le définir un animal qui fait rire, car si quelque autre animal y parvient, ou quelque objet inanimé, c'est par une ressemblance avec l'homme, par la marque que l'homme y imprime ou par l'usage que l'homme en fait.””

— Henri Bergson

“Solo empezamos a ser imitables ahí donde dejamos de ser nosotros mismos. Quiero decir que solo de puede imitar de nuestros gestos aquello que tienen de mecánicamente uniforme y, por eso mismo, de extraño a nuestra viva personalidad. Imitar a alguien es extraer la parte de automatismo que este ha dejado introducirse en su persona.””

— Henri Bergson