223 Quotes by Gaston Bachelard

Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.

One doesn't read poetry while thinking of other things.

It is a poor reverie which invites a nap. One must even wonder whether, in this "failing asleep", the subconscious itself does not undergo a decline in being.

The human mind has claimed for water one of its highest values-the value of purity.

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

This word "description" may be disconcerting when used to refer to what is generally called a translation. But when one wishes to render a verbal creation (as opposed to a didactic statement) from one language to another, he is confronted with two equally unsatisfactory choices. He may, according to his talents, elaborate a similar, but never identical creation, or he may describe that creation as completely as possible in his own language.

In our life as a civilized person in the industrial age, we are invaded by objects; how could an object have a "force" when it no longer has individuality?

The reverie would not last if it were not nourished by the images of the sweetness of living, by the illusions of happiness.

What action could bodies and substances have if they were not named in a further increase of dignity where common nouns become proper nouns?