The poetic image is a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche Gaston Bachelard More Quotes by Gaston Bachelard More Quotes From Gaston Bachelard By listening to certain words as a child listens to the sea in a seashell, a word dreamer hears the murmur of a world of dreams. Gaston Bachelard seadreamchildren Rilke wrote: 'These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased. Gaston Bachelard spacenaturemoving He who ceases to learn cannot adequately teach. Gaston Bachelard ceaseteach Love is never finished expressing itself, and it expresses itself better the more poetically it is dreamed. Gaston Bachelard finishedlove-islove 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 sleepmorningnight Daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity. Gaston Bachelard dreamerbearsworld Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world. Gaston Bachelard childhoodadultslife The reveries of two solitary souls prepare the sweetness of loving. Gaston Bachelard soullovetwo The reverie we intend to study is poetic reverie. This is a reverie which poetry puts on the right track, the track an expanding consciousness follows. This reverie is written, or, at least, promises to be written. It is already facing the great universe of the blank page. Then images begin to compose and fall into place. Gaston Bachelard trackpoetryfall A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream. Gaston Bachelard dreamwritinggiving Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home. Late in life, with indomitable courage, we continue to say that we are going to do what we have not yet done: we are going to build a house. This dream house may be merely a dream of ownership, the embodiment of everything that is considered convenient, comfortable, healthy, sound, desirable, by other people. It must therefore satisfy both pride and reason, two irreconcilable terms. Gaston Bachelard pridedreamhome The human being taken in his profound reality as well as in his great tension of becoming is a divided being, a being which divides again, having permitted himself the illusion of unity for barely an instant. He divides and then reunites. Gaston Bachelard takenprofoundreality We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost. Gaston Bachelard emotionrealexpression Cosmic reveries separate us from project reveries. They situate us in a world and not in a society. The cosmic reverie possesses a sort of stability or tranquility. It helps us escape time. It is a state. Gaston Bachelard societytimeworld When we are children, people show us so many things that we lose the profound sense of seeing... And just how could adults show us the world they have lost! They know; they think they know; they say they know. Gaston Bachelard philosophicalchildrenthinking Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need. Gaston Bachelard desireintegritymen The only possible proof of the existence of water, the most convincing and the most intimately true proof, is thirst. Gaston Bachelard proofexistencewater In order to dream so far, is it enough to read? Isn't it necessary to write? Write as in our schoolboy past, in those days when, as Bonnoure says, the letters wrote themselves one by one, either in their gibbosity or else in their pretentious elegance? In those days, spelling was a drama, our drama of culture at work in the interior of a word. Gaston Bachelard readingdreamdrama It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality. Gaston Bachelard impermanencefinalitystates The word chrysalis alone is an unmistakable indication that here two dreams are joined together, dreams that be-speak both the repose and flight of being, evening's crystallization and wings that open to the light. Gaston Bachelard dreamwingstwo
