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To Speak Of God, To Think Of God, Is In Every Respect To Show What One Is Made Of. I Have Always Wagered Against God And I Regard The Little That I Have Won In This World As Simply The Outcome Of This Bet. However Paltry May Have Been The Stake (my Life) I Am Conscious Of Having Won To The Full. Everything That Is Doddering, Squint-eyed, Vile, Polluted And Grotesque Is Summoned Up For Me In That One Word: God!

-Andre Breton

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To Speak Of God,

Andre Breton

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To Speak Of God, To Think Of God, Is In Every Respect To Show What One Is Made Of. I Have Always Wagered Against God And I Regard The Little That I Have Won In This World As Simply The Outcome Of This Bet. However Paltry May Have Been The Stake (my Life) I Am Conscious Of Having Won To The Full. Everything That Is Doddering, Squint-eyed, Vile, Polluted And Grotesque Is Summoned Up For Me In That One Word: God!

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It Was In The Black Mirror Of Anarchism That Surrealism First Recognised Itself.

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Finding Yourself

Under His (marc Chagall, Ed.) Sole Impulse Metaphor Made Its Triumphal Entry Into Modern Painting.

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There Is Nothing With Which It Is So Dangerous To Take Liberties As Liberty Itself.

Surrealism Is Based On The Belief In The Omnipotence Of Dreams, In The Undirected Play Of Thought.

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.

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?

A Work Of Art Has Value Only If Tremors Of The Future Run Through It.

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Insubordination

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Trust In The Inexhaustible Character Of The Murmur.

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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.

Nothing That Surrounds Us Is Object, All Is Subject.

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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.

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The Mind Which Plunges Into Surrealism, Relives With Burning Excitement The Best Part Of Childhood.

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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.

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Keep Reminding Yourself That Literature Is One Of The Saddest Roads That Leads To Everything.

Reminding Yourself

Words Have Finished Flirting. Now They Are Making Love.

The Important Thing Is That Man Is Lost In Time, In The Moment That Immediately Precedes Him - Which Only Attests, By Reflection, To The Fact That He Is Lost In The Moment That Follows

Life’s Greatest Gift Is The Freedom It Leaves You To Step Out Of It Whenever You Choose.

There Is By My Leaning Over The Precipice Of Your Presence And Your Absence In Hopeless Fusion My Finding The Secret Of Loving You Always For The First Time

When Will The Arbitrary Be Granted The Place It Deserves In The Formation Of Works And Ideas?

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Surrealism Is Based On The Belief In The Superior Reality Of Certain Forms Of Previously Neglected Associations, In The Omnipotence Of Dreams, In The Disinterested Play Of Thought. It Tends To Ruin Once And For All Other Psychic Mechanisms And To Substitute Itself For Them In Solving All The Principle Problems Of Life.

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