19 quotes
I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Someone like myself, who claimed to be a real madman, living and organized with a Pythagorean precision..
Diary of a Genius (1964)
It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Begin by drawing and painting like the old masters. After that do as you see fit - you will always be respected.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Don't be afraid of perfection. You will never attain it!
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Don't bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
The daily life of a genius, his sleep, his digestion, he ecstasies, his nails, his colds, his blood, his life and death are essentially different from the rest of mankind.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Surrounded by countless people who murmur my name and call me 'maître', I am about to inaugurate the exhibition of my one hundred illustrations of the Divine Comedy at the Galliera Museum.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics, and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than of genius.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Democratic governments are not suited to the publication of the thunderous revelations I am in the habit of making. The unpublished parts will appear later.. ..when Europe will have restored its traditional monarchies.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
This book ['Diary of a Genius', by Dali] will prove that that the daily life of a genius, his sleep, his digestion, his ecstasies, his nails, his colds, his blood, his life and death are essentially different from those of the rest of mankind.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Sleeping is a way of dying or at least of dying to reality, better still it is the death of reality, but reality dies in love as in dreams. The life of man is entirely occupied by the bloody osmosis of dreams and love.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
- There was nothing left between me and the void. I must have spent several minutes lying on my stomach with my eyes closed to resist its almost invincible attraction.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
- September 1952/the2nd/Again this morning, while I was on the toilet, I had a truly remarkable piece of insight. My bowel movement, by the way, was perfectly exceptional, smooth and odourless.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
'Up there!'. Wonderful words! All my life has been dominated by these antagonisms: high and low. In my childhood I tried desperately to be high up.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
And man's highest mission on earth is to spiritualize everything, it is his excrement in particular that needs it most. As a result, I increasingly dislike all scatological jokes and all forms of frivolity on this subject. Indeed, I am dumbfounded at how little philosophical and metaphysical importance the human mind has attached to the vital subject of excrement.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
Ever since the French revolution there has developed a vicious, cretinizing tendency to consider a genius (apart from his work) as a human being more or less the same in every sense as other ordinary mortals. This is wrong. And if this is wrong for me, the genius of the greatest spiritual order or our day, a true modern genius, it is even more wrong when applied to those who incarnated the almost divine genius of the Renaissance, such as Raphael.
Diary of a Genius (1964)
It is with Millet's 'Angelus' that I associate all the pre-twilight and twilight memories of my childhood, regarding them as the most delirious, in other words (commonly speaking) poetic.. .Most frequently, at the end of summer days, I would leave the streets of the town and go to the fields to listen to the sounds of insects and plunge into infinite reveries.
Diary of a Genius (1964)