Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins.
Andre BretonRead
What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only the real.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that what we perceive as extraordinary becomes normalized through familiarity and understanding.
Andre Breton reflects on the nature of reality and perception, arguing that what is often considered 'fantastic' loses its distinctiveness when thoroughly understood. This suggests that the marvels of life, which may initially seem extraordinary, become part of our everyday experience, reshaping our understanding of what is real and what is wonderful.
Themes
RealityPerceptionFantasticNormalizationUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the evolving nature of art, this quote can be used to emphasize how new artistic movements become part of mainstream culture.
More from Andre Breton
All quotes →The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.
Andre BretonRead
Beauty is like a train that ceaselessly roars out of the Gare de Lyon and which I know will never leave, which has not left. It consists of jolts and shocks, many of which do not have much importance, but which we know are destined to produce one Shock, which does...The human heart, beautiful as a seismograph...Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.
Andre BretonRead
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 BretonRead
There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life’s meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work.
Andre BretonRead
Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.
Andre BretonRead
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