One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort. Gaston Bachelard More Quotes by Gaston Bachelard More Quotes From Gaston Bachelard If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves? Gaston Bachelard feminineifs To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer. Gaston Bachelard wellsifslife Through imagination, thanks to the subtleties of the irreality function, we re-enter the world of confidence, the world of the confident being, which is the proper world for reverie. Gaston Bachelard thanksimaginationworld Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject. Gaston Bachelard descriptionobjectssubjects Actually, however, life begins less by reaching upward, than by turning upon itself. But what a marvelously insidious, subtle image of life a coiling vital principle would be! And how many dreams the leftward oriented shell, or one that did not conform to the rotation of its species, would inspire! Gaston Bachelard principlesdreaminspire We must listen to poets. Gaston Bachelard poet We believe we can also show that words do not have exactly the same psychic "weight" depending on whether they belong to the language of reverie or to the language of daylight life-to rested language or language under surveillance-to the language of natural poetry or to the language hammered out by authoritarian prosodies. Gaston Bachelard psychicspoetrybelieve A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. Gaston Bachelard communicationwritingbeauty One must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in. Gaston Bachelard house A universe comes to contribute to our happiness when reverie comes to accentuate our repose. You must tell the man who wants to dream well to begin by being happy. Then reverie plays out its veritable destiny; it becomes poetic reverie and by it, in it, everything becomes beautiful. If the dreamer had "the gift" he would turn his reverie into a work. And this work would be grandiose since the dreamed world is automatically grandiose. Gaston Bachelard destinydreambeautiful Nobody knows that in reading we are re-living our temptations to be a poet. All readers who have a certain passion for reading, nurture and repress, through reading, the desire to become a writer. Gaston Bachelard passionreadingtemptation There is no original truth, only original error. Gaston Bachelard errorstruthmistake The past of the soul is so distant! The soul does not live on the edge of time. It finds its rest in the universe imagined by reverie. Gaston Bachelard souldoepast Perhaps it is even a good idea to stir up a rivalry between conceptual and imaginative activity. In any case, one will encounter nothing but disappointments if he intends to make them cooperate. The image can not provide matter for a concept. By giving stability to the image, the concept would stifle its life. Gaston Bachelard disappointmentgivingideas So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us. Gaston Bachelard flare-upfirehealing For in the end, the irreality function functions as well in the face of man as in the face of the cosmos. What would we know of others if we did not imagine things? Gaston Bachelard imaginationmenreality A book is always an emergence above everyday life. A book is expressed life and thus is an addition to life. Gaston Bachelard everydaylifebook 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 dreamhomepeace Any work of science, no matter what its point of departure, cannot become fully convincing until it crosses the boundary between the theoretical and the experimental: Experimentation must give way to argument, and argument must have recourse to experimentation. Gaston Bachelard departuregivingscience We understand nature by resisting it. Gaston Bachelard resistingmiscellaneous
