Andre Breton
Andre Breton
André Bretonwas a French writer, poet, anarchist and anti-fascist. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifestoof 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth19 February 1896
CountryFrance
imagination definitions artistic
Artistic imagination must remain free. It is by definition free from any fidelity to circumstances, especially to the intoxicating circumstances of history.
contained god grotesque single
Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, infamous, sullying, and grotesque is contained for me in this single word: God
arts chief wise
Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
dali hesitates man might vice
Dali is like a man who hesitates between talent and genius, or, as one might once have said, between vice and virtue.
soul limbo
I am the soul in limbo.
secret oneself
What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find.
love sight phrases
It is the whole modern concept of love which should be re-examined, such as is commonly but transparently expressed in phrases like 'love at first sight' and 'honeymoon'. All this shoddy terminology is on top of that tainted with the most reactionary irony.
paradise flow tides
How small these rescued tides appear! Earthly delights flow in torrents. Each object offers paradise.
running art ifs
A work of art has value only if tremors of the future run through it...
children wife shadow
Leave everything. Leave Dada. Leave your wife. Leave your mistress. Leave your hopes and fears. Leave your children in the woods. Leave the substance for the shadow. Leave your easy life, leave what you are given for the future. Set off on the roads.
future humanity events
In the world we live in everything militates in favor of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again.
men people trying
How I loathe the servitude people try to hold up to me as being so valuable. I pity the man who is condemned to it, who cannot generally escape it, but it is not the burden of his labor that disposes me in his favor, it is - it can only be - the vigor of his protest against it.
mean justice imagination
The mere word freedom is the only one that still excites me. I deem it capable of indefinitely sustaining the old human fanaticism. It doubtless satisfies my only legitimate aspiration. Among all the many misfortunes to which we are heir, it is only fair to admit that we are allowed the greatest degree of freedom of thought. It is up to us not to misuse it. To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery-even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness-is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself.
fairy-stories green adults
There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.