Breton Quotes

“Le coeur humain, beau comme un sismographe.”
― André Breton, Nadja

“Equally, the surrealists consider words as witnesses of life acting in a direct way in human affairs. To use words properly it was necessary to treat them with respect, for they were the intermediaries between oneself and the rest of creation. To abuse them was immediately to set oneself adrift from true being. Words need to be coaxed to reveal a little of their true nature, so as to close the breach that exists between the writer and the universe. The world is not something alien against which man is in conflict. Rather man and cosmos exist in reciprocal motion. We are not cast adrift in an alien or meaningless environment. The universe is intimate with us and, as Breton insisted, it is a cryptogram to be deciphered.”
― Michael Richardson, Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World

“O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.”
― Old Breton fisherman s prayer

“My legion has won many victories. And since you are my dearest friend, we will fight that much harder." His intense, dark eyes locked with hers. "I swear to you: Ker-Ys will not fall.”
― Jennifer McKeithen, Atlantis: On the Shores of Forever

“She ran. Deeper, deeper into the mysterious Broceliande forest...”
― Jennifer McKeithen, Atlantis: On the Shores of Forever

“Les enquêtes effectuées en 1830 démontrent, qu'en Basse-Bretagne, 70% de la population parle breton. Les grandes villes sont bilingues, le total des monolingues bretons s'élève à 80% des locuteurs, une grande partie de ces bretonnants sait lire et écrire le breton. Cette situation va perdurer jusqu'à la veille de la première guerre mondiale, à l'exception des villes dont la francisation s'est fortement accentuée. On évalue le nombre de locuteurs à 1300000 en 1914.
p145”
― Patrick Le Besco, Parlons breton: Langue et culture

“Si cette population avait transmis sa langue aux générations suivantes dans des conditions de développement normales, cela ferait maintenant quelques quatre ou cinq millions de bretonnants : les langues vernaculaires ayant moins de cinq millions de locuteurs sont nombreuses : l'hébreu (4,6 millions), le norvégien (4,4 millions), l'albanais (2,5 millions), l'islandais (220 000) etc.
p145-146”
― Patrick Le Besco, Parlons breton: Langue et culture

“Intellectuals in all three regions called for the creation of a high-culture tongue that would be capable of functioning in all ways that English and French are wont to do. It would be more learned and, at the same time, more all-embracing. On the agenda were the following: lexical enrichment of the vernacular; a bridging of the dialects and the attainment of a form of linguistic unity by adopting a uniform, unified 'rational' orthography; the creation of scholarly, standardized dictionaries and grammars; and use of language as an arm in the struggle for cultural and, if possible, political autonomy.”
― William Calin, Minority Literatures and Modernism: Scots, Breton, and Occitan, 1920 - 1990