To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
There is no original truth, only original error.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectifications of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
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.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child’s world and thus a world event.>br /> Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Fragments of a Poetics of Fire. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. April 1997. Paperback, 197 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005188.
Poetry is one of the destinies of speech.... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
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.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
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.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
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.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
Man is an imagining being.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
The words of the world want to make sentences.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. 1960.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie. Beacon Press. June 1, 1971. Paperback, 224 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064130.
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.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. April 1, 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064734.
What special depth there is in a child’s daydream? And how happy the child who really possesses his moments of solitude? It is a good thing, it is even salutary, for a child to have periods of boredom, for him to learn to know the dialectics of exaggerated play and causeless, pure boredom.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. April 1, 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064734.
Poetry gives not so much a nostalgia for youth, which would be vulgar, as a nostalgia for the expressions of youth. It offers us images as we should have imagined them during the ‘original impulse’ of youth. Primal images, simple engravings are but so many invitations to start imagining again. They give us back areas of being, houses in which the human being’s certainty of being is concentrated, and we have the impression that, by living in such images as these, in images that are as stabilizing as these are, we could start a new life, a life that would be our own, that would belong to us in our very depths.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. April 1, 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064734.
When a dreamer can reconstruct the world from an object that he transforms magically through his care of it, we become convinced that everything in the life of poet is germinal.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. April 1, 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064734.
I always feel a slight shock, a certain mild, philological pain, whenever a great writer uses a word in a derogatory sense. To begin with, all words do an honest job in our everyday language, and not even the most ordinary among them, those that are attached to the most commonplace realities, lose their poetic possibilities as a result of this fact.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. April 1, 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064734.
I am reminded of an optimistic prover according to which: ‘Every pot has its cover.’ The world would get along better if pots and covers could always stay together...Gentle closing calls for gentle opening, and we should want life always to be well oiled.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. April 1, 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064734.
Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garrett. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in ‘foreign commerce’ on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves—this is a poet’s life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. April 1, 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064734.
The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. April 1, 1994. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064734.
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.
Bachelard, Gaston. Water and Dreams. 1942.
Bachelard, Gaston. Water and Dreams. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. March 15, 1999. Paperback, 213 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005250.
A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition.
Bachelard, Gaston. Water and Dreams. 1942.
Bachelard, Gaston. Water and Dreams. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. March 15, 1999. Paperback, 213 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005250.
True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.
Bachelard, Gaston. Water and Dreams. 1942.
Bachelard, Gaston. Water and Dreams. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. March 15, 1999. Paperback, 213 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005250.
The reflected world is the conquest of calm.
Bachelard, Gaston. Water and Dreams. 1942.
Bachelard, Gaston. Water and Dreams. Dallas Institute for Humanities & Culture. March 15, 1999. Paperback, 213 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0911005250.
We have only to speak of an object to think that we are being objective. But, because we chose it in the first place, the object reveals more about us than we do about it. What we consider to be our fundamental ideas concerning the world are often indications of the immaturity of our minds. Sometimes we stand in wonder before a chosen object; we build up hypotheses and reveries; in this way we form convictions which have all the appearance of true knowledge. But the initial source is impure: the first impression is not a fundamental truth. In point of fact, scientific objectivity is possible only if one has broken first with the immediate object, if one has refused to yield to the seduction of the initial choice, if one has checked and contradicted the thought which arise from one’s first observation. Any objective examination, when duly verified, refutes the results of the first contact with the object. To start with, everything must be called into question: sensation, common sense, usage however constant, even etymology, for words, which are made for signing and enchanting, rarely make contact with thought.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Psychoanalysis of Fire. 1938.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Psychoanlaysis of Fire. Beacon Press. 1987. Paperback, 128 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064610.
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Psychoanalysis of Fire. 1938.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Psychoanlaysis of Fire. Beacon Press. 1987. Paperback, 128 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0807064610.
Indeed, it is not in the least surprising that metaphors can be found that illustrate time if we make them the single connecting factor in the most varied of domains, in life, music, thought, emotion, and history. We think that by superimposing all these more or less empty, more or less blank images, we can make contact with the fullness of time and the reality of time; from a blank, abstract duration in which just the possibilities of being would be found, lined up one after the other, we think that we can move on to duration that is lived, felt, loved, sung, and written about it literature.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Dialectic of Duration. 1936.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Dialectic of Duration. Clinamen Press Ltd. January 1, 2000. Paperback, 218 pages, Language English, Paperback, 218 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1903083079.