To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream. — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
“Words are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. 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… — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
Dreaming by the river, I dedicated my imagination to water, to clear, green water, the water that makes the meadows green. — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves? — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
In writing, you discover interior sonorities in words. Dipthongs sound differently beneath the pen. One hears them with their sounds divorced. — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls. — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
The poetic image is a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make. — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists. — Gaston Bachelard Copy Share Image
