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André Breton Quotes

The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodatio...

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The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscur...

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I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call, where e...

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Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.

The imaginary is what tends to become real.

Past and future monopolize the poet’s sensory and intellectual faculties, detached from the immediat...

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All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.

Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and ...

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Nothing retains less of desire in art, in science, than this will to industry, booty, possession.

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches s...

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Il faut que l’homme s’évade de cette lice ridicule qu’on lui a faite: le prétendu réel actuel avec l...

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(speaking of Ann Radcliffe) A work of art worthy of the name is one which gives us back the freshnes...

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The lamentable expression: 'But it was only a dream", the increasing use of which - among others in ...

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The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.""Love is when you meet someone who tell...

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What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only t...

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May night continue to fall upon the orchestra

Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose.

Anthology of Black Humor

It is more or less a given that nothing is less favorable to clairvoyance than the bright sun: physi...

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Anthology of Black Humor

Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.

Anthology of Black Humor

At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suf...

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Anthology of Black Humor

Because of the earth’s roundness, Genghis Khan, in the fever of possession and destruction, hastened...

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Anthology of Black Humor

Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.

Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.

There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.

Manifestoes of Surrealism

We are in front of a fountain, whose jet she seems to be watching. 'Those are your thoughts and mine...

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Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.

I am concerned with facts of quite unverifiable intrinsic value, but which, by their absolutely unex...

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It is hard not to see into the future, faced with today's blind architecture - a thousand times more...

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Tell me whom you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are.

A word and everything is saved.A word and all is lost.

The important thing is that man is lost in time, in the moment that immediately precedes him - which...

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I am the soul in limbo.

My wife with the hair of a wood fireWith the thoughts of heat lightningWith the waist of an hourglas...

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Poems of André Breton: A Bilingual Anthology

The clouds were disappearing rapidly, leaving the stars to die. The night dried up.

The Magnetic Fields

We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing.

The Magnetic Fields

They rarely discovered a star red as a distant crime or a star-fish.

The Magnetic Fields

My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.

What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings

There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect ...

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André Breton

Writer

Born: 1896-02-19

Died: 1966-09-28

André Breton (19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer, poet and theorist of Surrealism. He is known best as the founder of the Surrealist art movement. He wrote the first Surrealist Manifesto: the 'Manifeste du Surréalisme' of 1924.More