Quotes by Gaston Bachelard

About Gaston Bachelard:

Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break (obstacle épistémologique and rupture épistémologique). He rose to some of the most prestigious positions in the Académie française and influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dominique Lecourt and Jacques Derrida.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Reveries of idealization develop, not by letting oneself be taken in by memories, but by constantly dreaming the values of a being whom one would love. And that is the way a great dreamer dreams his double. His magnified double sustains him." - Gasto...

Gaston Bachelard

I am alone so I dream of the being who has cured my solitude, who would be cured by solitudes. With its life, it brought me the idealizations of life, all the idealizations which give life a double, which lead life toward it summits, which make the d...

Gaston Bachelard

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling ...

Gaston Bachelard

For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.

Gaston Bachelard

When the image is new, the world is new.

Gaston Bachelard

I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

Gaston Bachelard

Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home. Late in life, with indomitable courage, we continue to say that we a...

Gaston Bachelard

Therefore, the places in which we have experienced daydreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling-places are relived as day-dreams that these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all t...

Gaston Bachelard

Rilke wrote: 'These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased.

Gaston Bachelard

Therefore, the places in which we have experienced day dreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling-places are relived as day-dreams these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all the t...

Gaston Bachelard

The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.

Gaston Bachelard

We must listen to poets.

Gaston Bachelard

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 ...

Gaston Bachelard

Here the phenomenologist has nothing in common with the literary critic who, as has frequently been noted, judges a work that he could not create and, if we are to believe certain facile condemnations, would not want to create. A literary critic is a...

Gaston Bachelard

A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell,” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain a...

Gaston Bachelard

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.

Gaston Bachelard

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

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

Gaston Bachelard

The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.

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.

Gaston Bachelard

Author Bio

  • NameGaston Bachelard
  • DescriptionFrench writer and philosopher
  • BornJune 27, 1884
  • DiedOctober 16, 1962
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Poet; Writer