Past Quotes by Gaston Bachelard

Dreaming by the river, I dedicated my imagination to water, to clear, green water, the water that makes the meadows green.

— Gaston Bachelard

If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves?

— Gaston Bachelard

The image can only be studied through the image, by dreaming images as they gather in reverie. It is a non-sense to claim to…

— Gaston Bachelard

If there is any realm where distinction is especially difficult, it is the realm of childhood memories, the realm of beloved images harbored in…

— Gaston Bachelard

In scientific thought, the concept functions all the better for being cut off from all background images. In its full exercise, the scientific concept…

— Gaston Bachelard

It is through the intentionality of poetic imagination that the poet's soul discovers the opening of consciousness common to all true poetry.

— Gaston Bachelard

In writing, you discover interior sonorities in words. Dipthongs sound differently beneath the pen. One hears them with their sounds divorced.

— Gaston Bachelard

Here we are at the very core of the thesis we wish to defend in the present essay: reverie is under the sign of…

— Gaston Bachelard

There are children who will leave a game to go and be bored in a corner of the garret. How often have I wished…

— Gaston Bachelard

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

— Gaston Bachelard

The poetic image is a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche

— Gaston Bachelard

In our view any awareness is an increment to consciousness, an added light, a reinforcement of psychic coherence. Its swiftness or instantaneity can hide…

— Gaston Bachelard

Imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree. It is root and boughs. It lives between earth and sky. It…

— Gaston Bachelard

Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.

— Gaston Bachelard

Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists.

— Gaston Bachelard