black
grey
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When the image is new, the world is new.

Gaston Bachelard

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.
GASTON BACHELARD

Corrective Hope Ideas Invention Repeat
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
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
He who ceases to learn cannot adequately teach.
GASTON BACHELARD

Accurate Learning Properly Teaching
Daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreamer Infinity Transportation World
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
The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.
GASTON BACHELARD

Conscious Listening Oneself Truth
We must listen to poets.
GASTON BACHELARD

Listening One Liner Poet
If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves?
GASTON BACHELARD

Feminine Ourselves Rest Spiritual
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
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
Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.
GASTON BACHELARD

Comparison Diminish Quality Term
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
When we are children, people show us so many things that we lose the profound sense of seeing… And just how could adults show us the world they have lost! They know; they think they know; they say they know.
GASTON BACHELARD

Adult Children Lost See Thinking World
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
GASTON BACHELARD

Beautiful Born Existence Kind Language Special
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful.
GASTON BACHELARD

Alive Beautiful Feeling Reading
The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreams Fiction Greatness Ourselves Poetry Situation
A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
GASTON BACHELARD

Blank Dreams Empty Ourselves Page Right Word
All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie. Poetic reverie listens to this polyphony of the senses, and the poetic consciousness must record it.
GASTON BACHELARD

Awake Consciousness Fall Harmony Poetic Record
It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.
GASTON BACHELARD

Better Final Live Oneself State
We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection.
GASTON BACHELARD

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

Away Connection Past Pull
We understand nature by resisting it.
GASTON BACHELARD

Nature One Liner Resistance Understand
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
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
The night dreamer cannot articulate a cogito. The night dream is a dream without a dreamer.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreamer Dreams Night

When the image is new, the world is new.

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When the image is new, the world is new.

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