black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.

Gaston Bachelard

An excess of childhood is the germ of a poem.
GASTON BACHELARD

Childhood Excess Germ Poem
One must live to build one’s house, and not build one’s house to live in.
GASTON BACHELARD

Build Home Live Oneself
The words of the world want to make sentences.
GASTON BACHELARD

Sentence Word World
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
The spoken reverie of substances calls matter to birth, to life, to spirituality.
GASTON BACHELARD

Born Call Life Spirituality Substance
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
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
Through imagination, thanks to the subtleties of the irreality function, we re-enter the world of confidence, the world of the confident being, which is the proper world for reverie.
GASTON BACHELARD

Confidence Function Imagination Proper Thankful World
By listening to certain words as a child listens to the sea in a seashell, a word dreamer hears the murmur of a world of dreams.
GASTON BACHELARD

Children Dreamer Listening Sea Word World
What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak… It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.
GASTON BACHELARD

Born Fact Hesitate Lying Ourselves Silence Source Suffering Talk
Words are clamor-filled shells. There’s many a story in the miniature of a single word!
GASTON BACHELARD

Small Story Word World
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
So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.
GASTON BACHELARD

Childhood Fire Flare Forgot Ourselves
Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject.
GASTON BACHELARD

Description Object Slave Subject
It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.
GASTON BACHELARD

Better Final Live Oneself State
A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.
GASTON BACHELARD

Experience Home Science Space

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gaston Bachelard Quotes