black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

A book is a human fact; a great book like Seraphita gathers together numerous psychological elements. These elements become coherent through a sort of psychological beauty. It does the reader a service.

Gaston Bachelard

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

Away Connection Past Pull
Childhood knows unhappiness through men. In solitude, it can relax its aches. When the human world leaves him in peace, the child feels like the son of the cosmos.
GASTON BACHELARD

Childhood Cosmos Happiness Human Man Peace Solitude Son World
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
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
So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.
GASTON BACHELARD

Childhood Fire Flare Forgot Ourselves
Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.
GASTON BACHELARD

Comparison Diminish Quality Term
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
When the image is new, the world is new.
GASTON BACHELARD

Image New World
Our whole childhood remains to be reimagined. In reimagining it, we have the possibility of recovering it in the very life of our reveries as a solitary child.
GASTON BACHELARD

Childhood Children Cover Imagination Ourselves Possible Solitary
The night dreamer cannot articulate a cogito. The night dream is a dream without a dreamer.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreamer Dreams Night
A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.
GASTON BACHELARD

Experience Home Science Space
For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.
GASTON BACHELARD

Date Determination Intimacy Knowledge Local Space Urgent
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
The past of the soul is so distant! The soul does not live on the edge of time. It finds its rest in the universe imagined by reverie.
GASTON BACHELARD

Distance Edge Imagination Live Past Soul Time Universe
There are reveries so deep, reveries which help us descend so deeply within ourselves that they rid us of our history. They liberate us from our name. These solitudes of today return us to the original solitudes.
GASTON BACHELARD

Help History Liberty Name Original Ourselves Return Solitude Spiritual
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

A book is a human fact; a great book like Seraphita gathers together numerous psychological elements. These elements become coherent through a sort of psychological beauty. It does the reader a service.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

A book is a human fact; a great book like Seraphita gathers together numerous psychological elements. These elements become coherent through a sort of psychological beauty. It does the reader a service.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gaston Bachelard Quotes