Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelardwas a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break. He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dominique Lecourt and Jacques Derrida, as well as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 June 1884
CountryFrance
states impermanence finality
It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.
world
The cleverer I am at miniaturizing the world, the better I possess it.
life book everyday
A book is always an emergence above everyday life. A book is expressed life and thus is an addition to life.
life tired heart
Sometimes, when I am tired of so many oscillations, I look for refuge in a word which I begin to love for itself. Resting in the heart of words, seeing clearly into the cell of a word, feeling that the word is the seed of a life, a growing dawn... The poet Vandercammen says all that in a line: "A word can be a dawn and even a sure shelter."
children son men
Childhood knows unhappiness through men. In solitude, it can relax its aches. When the human world leaves him in peace, the child feels like the son of the cosmos.
life matter substance
The spoken reverie of substances calls matter to birth, to life, to spirituality.
life men lasts
A clear conscience is, for me, an occupied conscience-never empty-the conscience of a man at work until his last breath.
giving littles irony
Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists.
dream boredom people
Very often, I confess, the teller of dreams bores me. His dream could perhaps interest me if it were frankly worked on. But to hear a glorious tale of his insanity! I have not yet clarified, psychoanalytically, this boredom during the recital of other people's dreams. Perhaps I have retained the stiffness of a rationalist. I do not follow the tale of justified incoherence docilely. I always suspect that part of the stupidities being recounted are invented.
love book imagination
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
simple ideas simplicity
Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.
wish facts persons
It will always be a fact that the woman is the person one idealizes, also the person who wishes his idealization.
fire flare-up childhood
So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.
dream peace hypocrite
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.