Gaston Bachelard quotes

" The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know. " # Progress

" I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company. " # Words # Books - Reading # Writers and Writing

" Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need. " # Desire

" Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul. " # Dreams # Reverie # Books - Reading

" 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. " # Home # Dreams # Peace

" 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. " # Ideas # Hope # Past

" Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls. " # Ideas # Simplicity # Mind

" Man is an imagining being. " # Imagination

" A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. " # Language # Beauty # Love

" To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer. " # Life and Living # Marriage # Quality