Quotes by Alfred Jarry

“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.”

“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”

“God is the tangential point between zero and infinity”

“Youre looking exceptionally ugly tonight, Madam, is it because we have company?”

“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.”

“Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations.”

“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.”

“It is conventional to call monster any blending of dissonant elements. I call monster every original inexhaustible beauty.”

“The virtue of dress rehearsals is that they are a free show for a select group of artists and friends of the author, and where for one unique evening the audience is almost expurgated of idiots.”

“Blind and unwavering undisciplined at all times constitutes the real strength of all free men.”

“Our lives are without reason, nothing outside the individuality.”

The work of art is a stuffed crocodile.

One can show ones contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of ones life a poem of incoherence and absurdity.

...and he had to have freedom-not even that, just to read and sleep in peace, without a uniform-sooner still.

God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.

It is conventional to call monster any blending of dissonant elements. I call monster every original inexhaustible beauty.