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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the deep connection between a person and nature, emphasizing a sense of freedom and authenticity found within the forest.
In this quote, Bachelard describes a profound relationship with the forest, portraying it as a sanctuary that fosters self-discovery and liberation from societal constraints. The imagery of 'bridle paths', 'thick foliage', and 'hiding places' illustrates how nature provides an escape where one can reconnect with their true self, free from the moral codes of civilization. The forest symbolizes a place of possibility, nurturing the heart and spirit in an intimate and personal way.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of nature in our lives, one might say, 'As Bachelard expressed, in the forest, we can truly find ourselves away from the chaos of cities.'
More from Gaston Bachelard
All quotes βOf course, any simplification runs the risk of mutilating reality; but it helps us establish perspectives.
Nobody knows that in reading we are re-living our temptations to be a poet. All readers who have a certain passion for reading, nurture and repress, through reading, the desire to become a writer.
Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.
In order to dream so far, is it enough to read? Isn't it necessary to write? Write as in our schoolboy past, in those days when, as Bonnoure says, the letters wrote themselves one by one, either in their gibbosity or else in their pretentious elegance? In those days, spelling was a drama, our drama of culture at work in the interior of a word.
How is it possible not to feel that there is communication between our solitude as a dreamer and the solitudes of childhood? And it is no accident that, in a tranquil reverie, we often follow the slope which returns us to our childhood solitudes.
Similar quotes
And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear.
As people flock to urban centers where ground space is limited, cities with green walls and roofs and skyscraper farms offer improved health and well-being, renewable resources, reliable food supply, and relief to the environment.
AND what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten.
Even without seeing the crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and katydids, we hear them shrilling in this season and trust that they're the tiny living gargoyles entomologists claim.
Beauty and sadness always go together. Nature thought beauty too rich to go forth Upon the earth without a meet alloy.
Tumbling-hair picker of buttercups violets dandelions And the big bullying daisies through the field wonderful with eyes a little sorry Another comes also picking flowers