What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. . . . It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us. The brook will nonetheless teach you to speak; in spite of sorrows and memories, it will teach you euphoria through euphuism, energy through the poem. It will repeat incessantly some beautiful, round world which rolls over rocks.

Gaston Bachelard

Then, on the surface of being, in that region where being wants to be both visible and hidden, the movements of opening and closing are so numerous, so frequently inverted, and so charged with hesitation, that we could conclude on the following formula: man is half-open being.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

If a poet looks through a microscope or a telescope, he always sees the same thing.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Words, I often imagine this, 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 other, 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. Must the philosopher alone be condemned by his peers always to live on the ground floor?

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space