Gaston Bachelard Quotes


"Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Life, World)

"The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Truth, Listening)

"To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Life, Living)

"The words of the world want to make sentences."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Want, Words, World)

"The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Dreams, Poetry)

"Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Will)

"There is no original truth, only original error."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Truth, Error)

"The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Soul, Being, Body, Night, Possession, Rest, Shadows, Sleep)

"The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Progress)

"So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Childhood, Fire)

"Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Ideas, Commerce, Effect)

"Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Creation, Desire, Man)

"One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Connection, Past)

"Man is an imagining being."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Being, Man)

"If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Peace, Dream, Day, Name)

"Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Imagination, Books, Literary, Writer)

"Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Soul, Mind, Reverie)

"Poetry is one of the destinies of speech... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Poetry, Future, Language, Speech)