But because we chose it in the first place, the object reveals more about us than we do about it.

︎ ︎

Gaston Bachelard           

What we consider to be our fundamental ideas concerning the world are often indications of the immaturity of our minds.

Sometimes we stand in wonder before a chosen object; we build up hypotheses and reveries; in this way we form convictions which have all the appearance of true knowledge. But the initial course is impure: the first impression is not a fundamental truth.

In order that a reverie is continued with such a constancy…

It is not just the vacancy of fleeting time, it must find its own material and the material element must give its own substance, its own rule and its special poetic to a reverie.

The human being taken in his profound reality as well as in his great tension of becoming is a divided being, a being which divides again, having permitted himself the illusion of unity for barely an instant.

He divides and then reunites.

Or I shall perceive (the ringing sound and the vanishing sound) one in the other, each permeating the other and organizing themselves like the note of a tune, so as to form what we shall call a continuous or qualitative multiplicity with no resemblance to number. I shall thus get the image of pure duration.