More - Gaston Bachelard Quotes

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.

Gaston Bachelard

 Childhood French Philosopher

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.

Gaston Bachelard

 Body French Philosopher

Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.

Gaston Bachelard

 French Philosopher Mind

Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life. . . . Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world.

Gaston Bachelard

 Childhood

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

Gaston Bachelard

 Dreams French Philosopher

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

Gaston Bachelard

 Creation French Philosopher

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

Gaston Bachelard

 French Philosopher

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.

Gaston Bachelard

 French Philosopher Past

Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event.

Gaston Bachelard

 French Philosopher

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

Gaston Bachelard

 Words