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
beach stars eye
What’s the good of these great fragile fits of enthusiasm, these jaded jumps of joys? We know nothing anymore, but the dead stars; we gaze at their faces; and we gasp with pleasure. Our mouths are dry as the lost beaches, and our eyes turn aimlessly and without hope. Now all that remain are these cafés where we meet to drink these cool drinks, these diluted spirits, and the tables are stickier than the pavements where our shadows of the day before have fallen.
silly eye games
A game: say something. Close your eyes and say something. Anything, a number, a name. Like this (she closes her eyes): Two, two what? Two women. What do they look like? Wearing black. Where are they? In a park. . . . And then, what are they doing? Try it, it's so easy, why don't you want to play? You know, that's how I talk to myself when I'm alone, I tell myself all kinds of stories. And not only silly stories: actually, I live this way altogether.
eye mirrors roles
The eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror... if it has only the capacity to reflect.
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...
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.
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.