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The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.

Andre Breton

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Andre Breton
Age: 70 †
Born: 1896
Born: February 18
Died: 1966
Died: September 28
Art Theorist
Drawer
Essayist
Novelist
Photographer
Poet
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Andre Breton
D'André Breton
Andre Breto
René Dobrant
Pure
Playfulness
Fact
Charles
Facts
Portions
Beautiful
Wholly
Certain
Obscure
Work
Poems
Leveled
Center
Revolver
Straight
Whimsical

More quotes by Andre Breton

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The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb.
Andre Breton
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It is hard not to see into the future, faced with today's blind architecture - a thousand times more stupid and more revolting than that of other ages. How bored we shall be inside!
Andre Breton
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Words have finished flirting. Now they are making love.
Andre Breton
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Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.
Andre Breton
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Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
Andre Breton
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Surrealism is based on the belief in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought.
Andre Breton
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I find it impossible to think of a picture save as a window, and my first concern about a window is to find out what it looks out on... and there is nothing I love so much as something which stretches away from me out of sight.
Andre Breton
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I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naivety has no peer but my own.
Andre Breton
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The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.
Andre Breton
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I maintain that anyone who still refuses to see, for instance, a horse galloping on a tomato, must be an idiot. A tomato is also a child's balloon - Surrealism, again, having suppressed the word like.
Andre Breton
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Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose.
Andre Breton
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Trust in the inexhaustible character of the murmur.
Andre Breton
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If surrealism ever comes to adopt a particular line of moral conduct, it has only to accept the discipline that Picasso has accepted and will continue to accept.
Andre Breton
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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.
Andre Breton
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Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I 'haunt.'
Andre Breton
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I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors I will not go looking for keys.
Andre Breton
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At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful.
Andre Breton
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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.
Andre Breton
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We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing.
Andre Breton
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At the outset, it is only liking, not understanding, that matters. Gaps in understanding ... are not only important, they are perhaps even welcome, like clearings in the woods, the better to allow the heart's rays to stream out without obstacle. The unlit shadows should remain obscure, which is the very condition of enchantment.
Andre Breton