Alfred Jarry Quotes
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God is the shortest distance from zero to infinity.
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God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
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Dieu est le point tangent de ze ro et de l'infini. God is the tangential point of zero and the infinite.
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Blind and unwavering undisciplined at all times constitutes the real strength of all free men.
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Laughter is born out of the discovery of the contradictory.
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Talking about things that are understandable only weighs down the mind.
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Anti-alcoholics are unfortunates in the grip of water, that terrible poison, so corrosive that out of all substances it has been chosen for washing and scouring, and a drop of water added to a clear liquid like Absinthe, muddles it.
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It is one of the great joys of home ownership to fire a pistol in one's own bedroom.
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Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations.
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You're looking exceptionally ugly tonight, Madam, is it because we have company?
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It is because the public are a mass inert, obtuse, and passive that they need to be shaken up from time to time so that we can tell from their bear-like grunts where they are and also where they stand. They are pretty harmless, in spite of their numbers, because they are fighting against intelligence.
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The applause of silence. is the only kind that counts.
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We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings.
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Duration is the transformation of a succession into a reversion. In other words: THE BECOMING OF A MEMORY.
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Clichés are the armature of the Absolute. (Source: Alfred Jarry, Selected Works, edited by Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor. Cape, London, 1965).
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The work of art is a stuffed crocodile.
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To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a mummified form.
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We believe... that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.
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The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character.
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La mort n'est que pour les me diocres. Death is only for the mediocre.