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
Andre Breton quotes about
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.
paradise flow tides
How small these rescued tides appear! Earthly delights flow in torrents. Each object offers paradise.
fairy-stories green adults
There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.
fate unique men
Over and above the various prejudices I acknowledge, the affinities I feel, the attractions I succumb to, the events which occur to me and to me alone- over and above a sum of movements I am conscious of making, of emotions I alone experience- I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference from them. Is it not precisely to the degree I become conscious of this difference that I shall recognize what I alone have been put on this earth to do, what unique message I alone may bear, so that I alone can answer for its fate?
wall sleep night
I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call, where everything hanging from the the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic, where I sleep nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later appear etched by a diamond.
painting metaphor modern
Under his (Marc Chagall, ed.) sole impulse metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting.
flirting making-love finished
Words have finished flirting. Now they are making love.
existence surrealism elsewhere
It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.
mind states state-of-mind
Dada is a state of mind.
hands levels crowds
The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd. Anyone who, at least once in his life, has not dreamed of thus putting an end to the petty system of debasement and cretinization in effect has a well-defined place in that crowd with his belly at barrel-level.
mirrors black firsts
It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself.
horse men imagination
The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.
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.
surrealism subjects surround
Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.