The Vital Spirit. L'élan Vital

I See Plainly How External Images Influence The Image That I Call My Body : They Transmit Movement To It.

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?

There Is Nothing [that] Disarms Us Like Laughter.

The Prestige Of The Nobel Prize Is Due To Many Causes, But In Particular To Its Twofold Idealistic And International Character: Idealistic In That It Has Been Designed For Works Of Lofty Inspiration; International In That It Is Awarded After The Production Of Different Countries Has Been Minutely Studied And The Intellectual Balance Sheet Of The Whole World Has Been Drawn Up. Free From All Other Considerations And Ignoring Any But Intellectual Values, The Judges Have Deliberately Taken Their Place In What The Philosophers Have Called A Community Of The Mind.

Laughter Appears To Stand In Need Of An Echo, Listen To It Carefully: It Is Not An Articulate, Clear, Well-defined Sound; It Is Something Which Would Fain Be Prolonged By Reverberating From One To Another, Something Beginning With A Crash, To Continue In Successive Rumblings, Like Thunder In A Mountain.