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At all times and in all fields the explanation by fire is a rich explanation.

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

Growth Space Tree
Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject.
GASTON BACHELARD

Description Object Slave Subject
For in the end, the irreality function functions as well in the face of man as in the face of the cosmos. What would we know of others if we did not imagine things?
GASTON BACHELARD

Cosmos End Face Function Imagination Man
The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreams Fiction Greatness Ourselves Poetry Situation
To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.
GASTON BACHELARD

Destiny Disappear Finding Infinity Nature Water
Instead of looking for the dream in reverie, people should look for reverie in the dream. There are calm beaches in the midst of nightmares.
GASTON BACHELARD

Calm Dreams Nightmare People
Every corner in a house, every angle in a room, every inch of secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into ourselves, is a symbol of solitude for the imagination; that is to say, it is the germ of a room, or of a house.
GASTON BACHELARD

Home Imagination Ourselves Room Space Symbol
Daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreamer Infinity Transportation World
Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?
GASTON BACHELARD

Action Imagination Perception Reality
There is no original truth, only original error.
GASTON BACHELARD

Errors Original Truth
Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.
GASTON BACHELARD

Comparison Diminish Quality Term
The house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.
GASTON BACHELARD

Allow Dreams Home Peace Protection
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
GASTON BACHELARD

Creation Desire Difference Man Need
The only possible proof of the existence of water, the most convincing and the most intimately true proof, is thirst.
GASTON BACHELARD

Evidence Intimate Possible Thirst True Water
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
GASTON BACHELARD

Expression Life Live Oneself Philosophy Poor Understand
At all times and in all fields the explanation by fire is a rich explanation.
GASTON BACHELARD

Explanation Fire Rich Time
A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.
GASTON BACHELARD

Experience Home Science Space
When the image is new, the world is new.
GASTON BACHELARD

Image New World
All knowledge is in response to a question. If there were no question, there would be no scientific knowledge. Nothing proceeds from itself.
GASTON BACHELARD

Knowledge Philosophy Question Science
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful.
GASTON BACHELARD

Alive Beautiful Feeling Reading
The reverie would not last if it were not nourished by the images of the sweetness of living, by the illusions of happiness.
GASTON BACHELARD

Happiness Illusion Image Live Nourish Sweet
The spoken reverie of substances calls matter to birth, to life, to spirituality.
GASTON BACHELARD

Born Call Life Spirituality Substance
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

Benefit Dreams Home Peace Protection
The cleverer I am at miniaturizing the world, the better I possess it.
GASTON BACHELARD

Better Clever Myself Possession World
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

Adult Animation Childhood Finding Life Permanent Return
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

Children Event Life World
We must listen to poets.
GASTON BACHELARD

Listening One Liner Poet

At all times and in all fields the explanation by fire is a rich explanation.

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At all times and in all fields the explanation by fire is a rich explanation.

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