Gaston Bachelard Quotes

The blank page gives us the right to dream.

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.

Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?

Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.

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

If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves?

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

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

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.

The reverie would not last if it were not nourished by the images of the sweetness of living, by the illusions of happiness.