223 Quotes by Gaston Bachelard

I can recover my calm by living the metaphors of the ocean.

The intellectualist philosopher who wants to hold words to their precise meaning, and uses them as the countless little tools of clear thinking, is bound to be surprised by the poet’s daring. And yet a syncretism of sensitivity keeps words from crystallizing into perfect solids. Unexpected adjectives collect about the focal meaning of the noun. A new environment allows the word to enter not only into one’s thoughts, but also into one’s daydreams. Language dreams.

The dream remains overloaded with the badly lived passions of daytime life. Solitude in the nocturnal dream is always a hostility. It is strange. It isn’t really our solitude.

Here is Menard’s own intimate forest: ‘Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade... I live in great density... Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage... In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities.

A pretext-not a cause-is sufficient for us to enter the “solitary situation”, the situation of the dreaming solitude. In this solitude, memories arrange themselves in tableaux. Decor takes precedence over drama. Sad memories take on at least the peace of melancholy.

We cannot say what reality is, only what it seems like to us.

Consciousness rejuvenates everything, giving a quality of beginning to the most everyday actions.

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

Toujours, imaginer sera plus grand que vivre.