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
Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that there is a state of consciousness where dualities and contradictions in life converge and become non-existent.
Andre Breton's quote explores the idea that the complexities of life often present us with contradictions that seem irreconcilable. However, there may be a level of understanding or a state of mind where these apparent oppositions—such as life and death, reality and imagination—can coexist without conflict, indicating a deeper truth beyond simple binaries. This perspective encourages us to consider a more unified view of existence, where we can embrace both extremes and recognize their interconnectedness.
Themes
LifeDeathContradictionImaginationMindPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the nature of existence and perception.
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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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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