Gaston Bachelard Quotes

The reveries of two solitary souls prepare the sweetness of loving.

There is no original truth, only original error.

Un rêve qui ne change pas les dimensions du monde est-il vraiment un rêve ?

"Topoanalysis, then, would be the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives. In the theater of the past that is constituted by memory, th stage setting maintains the characters in their dominant roles. At times we think we know ourselves in time, when all we know is a sequence of fixations in the spaces of the being's stability - a being who does not want to melt away, and who, even in the past, when he sets out in search of things past, wants time to "suspend" its flight. In its countless alveoli space contains compressed time. That is what space is for."

To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.

We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.

Il semble que la joie de lire soit le reflet de la joie d'écrire comme si le lecteur était le fantôme de l'écrivain.

On a shelf in the library are very old books that tell of another past than the one the dreamer has known. Dreams, thoughts and memoires weave a single fabric. The soul dreams and thinks, then it imagines.

An anguishing book offers anguished people a homeopathy of anguish.

the unconscious cannot be civilized.

Toujours, imaginer sera plus grand que vivre.

In reality, however, the poet has given concrete form to a very general psychological theme, namely, that there will always be more things in a closed, than in an open, box. To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience.

Il semble que dans le monde intermédiaire où se mêlent rêverie et réalité, il se réalise une plasticité de l’homme et de son monde sans qu’on ait jamais besoin de savoir où est le principe de cette double malléabilité

"Great images have both a history and a prehistory; they are always a blend of memory and legend, with the result that we never experience an image directly. Indeed, every great image has an unfathomable oneiric depth to which the personal past adds special color. Consequently it is not until late in life that we really revere an image, when we discover that its roots plunge well beyond the history that is fixed in our memories. In the realm of absolute imagination, we remain young late in life. But we must lose our earthly Paradise in order to actually live in it, to experience it in the reality of its images, in the absolute sublimation that transcends all passion. A poet meditating upon the life of a great poet, that is Victor-Emile Michelet meditating upon the life of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, wrote: "Alas! we have to grow old to conquer youth, to free it from its fetters and live according to its original impulse.

What benefits new books bring us! I would like a basket full of books telling the youth of images which fall from heaven for me every day. This desire is natural. This prodigy is easy. For, up there, in heaven, isn't paradise an immense library?

But it is not sufficient to receive; one must welcome. One must, say the pedagogue and the dietician in the same voice, ‘assimilate.’ In order to do that, we are advised not to read too fast and to be careful not to swallow too large a bite. We are told to divide each difficulty into as many parts as possible, the better to solve them. Yes, chew well, drink a little at a time, savor poems line by line. All these precepts are well and good. But one precept orders them. One first needs a good desire to eat, drink and read. One must want to read a lot, read more, always read.

Thus, in the morning, before the books piled high on my table, to the god of reading, I say my prayer of the devouring reader: ‘Give us this day our daily hunger . . .’” - Gaston Bachelard, ”Introduction”, The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos, Pages 25-26