To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
Source: Fragments of a Poetics of Fire, A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books, 1988; tr. 1990.
-- Gaston Bachelard, (Jun 27 1884-1962), French philosopher; He worte The Pyschoanalysis of Fire, (La psychanalyse du feu).