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The reflected world is the conquest of calm.

Gaston Bachelard

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
The cleverer I am at miniaturizing the world, the better I possess it.
GASTON BACHELARD

Better Clever Myself Possession 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.
GASTON BACHELARD

Beautiful Book Fact Greatness Human Reading Service Togetherness
The metaphor is – an origin, the origin of an image which acts directly, immediately.
GASTON BACHELARD

Act Direct Image Origin
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
Words are clamor-filled shells. There’s many a story in the miniature of a single word!
GASTON BACHELARD

Small Story Word World
The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.
GASTON BACHELARD

Conscious Listening Oneself Truth
The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreams Fiction Greatness Ourselves Poetry Situation
The blank page gives us the right to dream.
GASTON BACHELARD

Blank Dreams Page Right
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
Childhood lasts all through life.
GASTON BACHELARD

Childhood Life One Liner
Man is an imagining being.
GASTON BACHELARD

Imagination Man One Liner
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
The night dreamer cannot articulate a cogito. The night dream is a dream without a dreamer.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreamer Dreams Night
Nobody knows that in reading we are re-living our temptations to be a poet. All readers who have a certain passion for reading, nurture and repress, through reading, the desire to become a writer.
GASTON BACHELARD

Desire Poet Reading Temptations Writing
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
We understand nature by resisting it.
GASTON BACHELARD

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

Feminine Ourselves Rest Spiritual
A book is always an emergence above everyday life. A book is expressed life and thus is an addition to life.
GASTON BACHELARD

Addition Book Day Expression Life
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
Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject.
GASTON BACHELARD

Description Object Slave Subject
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
Daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreamer Infinity Transportation World
To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience.
GASTON BACHELARD

Experience Image Imagination Kill
Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.
GASTON BACHELARD

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

Away Connection Past Pull
A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.
GASTON BACHELARD

Experience Home Science Space

The reflected world is the conquest of calm.

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The reflected world is the conquest of calm.

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