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The only possible proof of the existence of water, the most convincing and the most intimately true proof, is thirst.

Gaston Bachelard

The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.
GASTON BACHELARD

Character Known Ourselves Progress
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
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
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
A clear conscience is, for me, an occupied conscience-never empty-the conscience of a man at work until his last breath.
GASTON BACHELARD

Breathe Conscience Empty Man Myself
A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.
GASTON BACHELARD

Experience Home Science Space
One must live to build one’s house, and not build one’s house to live in.
GASTON BACHELARD

Build Home Live Oneself
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
Cosmic reveries separate us from project reveries. They situate us in a world and not in a society. The cosmic reverie possesses a sort of stability or tranquility. It helps us escape time. It is a state.
GASTON BACHELARD

Escape Project Separate Situation Society Stability State Time Tranquility 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 blank page gives us the right to dream.
GASTON BACHELARD

Blank Dreams Page Right
We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.
GASTON BACHELARD

Expression History Lost Poet Poetry Reality
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
Poetry is one of the destinies of speech… One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.
GASTON BACHELARD

Destiny Future Image Language Oneself Poetry Speech
The reflected world is the conquest of calm.
GASTON BACHELARD

Calm Reflection World
Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject.
GASTON BACHELARD

Description Object Slave Subject
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
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
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
The dream remains overloaded with the badly lived passions of daytime life. Solitude in the nocturnal dream is always a hostility. It is strange. It isn’t really our solitude.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreams Life Live Load Ourselves Passion Remain Solitude Time
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
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
Man is an imagining being.
GASTON BACHELARD

Imagination Man One Liner
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
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
Childhood lasts all through life.
GASTON BACHELARD

Childhood Life One Liner
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.

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The only possible proof of the existence of water, the most convincing and the most intimately true proof, is thirst.

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