Top 24 Quotes & Sayings by Alfred Jarry

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French writer Alfred Jarry.

Last updated on April 20, 2025.

Alfred Jarry was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896). He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics.

French - Writer | September 8, 1873 - November 1, 1907

Source: Wikipedia

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.

Alfred Jarry

God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.

Alfred Jarry

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

Alfred Jarry

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

Alfred Jarry

We believe... that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.

Alfred Jarry

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.

Alfred Jarry

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

Alfred Jarry

I am dying. Please ... bring me a toothpick.

Alfred Jarry

Dawn was breaking, like the light from another world.

Alfred Jarry

The applause of silence. is the only kind that counts.

Alfred Jarry

Talking about things that are understandable only weighs down the mind.

Alfred Jarry

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.

Alfred Jarry

Dieu est le point tangent de ze ro et de l'infini. God is the tangential point of zero and the infinite.

Alfred Jarry

The work of art is a stuffed crocodile.

Alfred Jarry

To be weird! That is my goal!

Alfred Jarry

You're looking exceptionally ugly tonight, Madam, is it because we have company?

Alfred Jarry

Laughter is born out of the discovery of the contradictory.

Alfred Jarry

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.

Alfred Jarry

Duration is the transformation of a succession into a reversion. In other words: THE BECOMING OF A MEMORY.

Alfred Jarry

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.

Alfred Jarry

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.

Alfred Jarry