Gaston Bachelard: Living

Gaston Bachelard was French writer and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on living.
Gaston Bachelard: 70 quotes5 likes

“It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: The Poetics of Space

“To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.”

Gaston Bachelard

A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)

“Words … are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in ‘foreign commerce’ on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves—this is a poet’s life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: La poétique de l'espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958), Ch. 6

“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

Introduction, sect. 6
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie) (1960)

“The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

La poétique de l'espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958)