Gaston Bachelard quotes

Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher best known for his work on the philosophy of science and the poetics of imagination. His writings explored how scientific thinking and poetic imagination shape human understanding. He greatly influenced fields such as epistemology, literary criticism, and the study of dreams. Here are 39 of his quotes:

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)
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
There is no original truth, only original error. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
Man is an imagining being. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
The words of the world want to make sentences. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
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. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul. (Gaston Bachelard)
Poetry is one of the destinies of speech... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
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. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
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. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
The reflected world is the conquest of calm. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
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. (Gaston Bachelard)
Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
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. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
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. View quote
Gaston Bachelard
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. View quote
Gaston Bachelard