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Gaston Bachelard

Gaston Bachelard Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Gaston Bachelard Quotes

“Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home. Late in life, with indomitable courage, we continue to say that we are going to do what we have not yet done: we are going to build a house. This dream house may be merely a dream of ownership, the embodiment of everything that is considered convenient, comfortable, healthy, sound, desirable, by other people. It must therefore satisfy both pride and reason, two irreconcilable terms.”

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Author:Gaston Bachelard
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“We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”

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Author:Gaston Bachelard
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“Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated. All our lives we come back to them in our daydreams. A psychoanalyst should, therefore, turn his attention to this simple localization of our memories. I should like to give the name of topoanalysis to this auxiliary of pyschoanalysis. Topoanalysis, then would be the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives.”

IfsGivingShouldWould BeTurnsCoursesHouseNamesBitsMemoriesSimpleAttentionStudyOur LivesPsychologicalThanksIntimateRefugeSiteOur MemoriesDaydreamingSystematicCorridorsCellars
Book:The Poetics of Space
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“Baudelaire writes: In certain almost supernatural inner states, the depth of life is entirely revealed in the spectacle, however ordinary, that we have before our eyes, and which becomes the symbol of it." Here we have a passage that designates the phenomenological direction I myself pursue. The exterior spectacle helps intimate grandeur unfold.”

WritingStatesHelpingEyeLife IsCertainOrdinaryDepthPursueSymbolsIntimatePassagesGrandeurExteriorBaudelaire
Author:Gaston Bachelard
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“Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade...I live in great density...Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage...In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities.”

HeartSelfCitiesMoralSunPathMy HeartDistanceForestsCodeIntimateHidingShadeThickShelterSealsLureDensityHiding PlaceMoral CodeFoliageSlumps
Author:Gaston Bachelard
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“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.”

IfsThinkingDreamMovingYoungReadingCompanyWrittenPagesHeavyWanderAbandonDreamerAccentsVocabularyStressedSyllablesWritten WordBe YoungOverloadBad CompanyNew CompanyInvert
Author:Gaston Bachelard
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