Water and Dreams Quotes

“I was born in a country of brooks and rivers, in a corner of Champagne, called Le Vallage for the great number of its valleys. The most beautiful of its places for me was the hollow of a valley by the side of fresh water, in the shade of willows...My pleasure still is to follow the stream, to walk along its banks in the right direction, in the direction of the flowing water, the water that leads life towards the next village...Dreaming beside the river, I gave my imagination to the water, the green, clear water, the water that makes the meadows green. ...The stream doesn’t have to be ours; the water doesn’t have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every spring.”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

“L'eau est vraiment l'élément transitoire. Il est la métamorphose ontologique essentielle entre le feu et la terre”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

“L'individu n'est pas la somme de ses impressions générales, il est la somme de ses impressions singulières.”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

“L'imagination n'est pas, comme le suggère l'étymologie, la faculté de former des images de la réalité ; elle est la faculté de former des images qui dépassent la réalité, qui chantent la réalité. Elle est une faculté de surhumanité.”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

“L'être voué à l'eau est un être en vertige. Il meurt à chaque minute, sans cesse quelque chose de sa substance s'écoule. La mort quotidienne n'est pas la mort exubérante du feu qui perce le ciel de ses flèches; la mort quotidienne est la mort de l'eau. L'eau coule toujours, l'eau tombe toujours, elle finit toujours en sa mort horizontale. [...] La peine de l'eau est infinie.”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

“The individual is not the sum of his common impressions but of his unusual ones.”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

“Images discovered by men evolve slowly, painfully; hence Jacques Bousquet's profound remark: "A new image costs humanity as much labor as a new characteristic costs a plant.”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

“D'autres amours viendront bien entendu se greffer sur les premières forces aimantes. Mais toutes ces amours ne pourront jamais détruire la priorité historique de notre premier sentiment. La chronologie du cœur est indestructible.”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

“Ce qui ne peut être écrit mérite-t-il d'être vécu ?”
― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter