Magritte's favored themes were the "window painting" and the "painting within a painting."

The Human Condition is one of Magritte's earliest treatments of either subject, and in it he combines the two, making what may be his most subtle and profound statement of their shared meaning.

The Human Condition displays an easel placed inside a room and in front of a window. The easel holds an unframed painting of a landscape that seems in every detail agreeable with the landscape seen outside the window. At first, one automatically assumes that the painting on the easel depicts the portion of the landscape outside the window that it hides from view. 

However, one realizes that this assumption is not quite accurate:  that is, that Magritte's painting is real, while the painting on the easel is a representation of that reality. In fact, there is no difference between them. Both are part of the same painting, the same artistic fabrication. It is perhaps to this repeating cycle, in which the viewer, even against his will, sees the one as real and the other as representation, that Magritte's title makes reference.

Quotes by Dali

1. P. Halsman: Dali, what is surrealism? Dali: Surrealism is myself.
2. At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.
3. Don't bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.
4. Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.
5. Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
6. I believe that the moment is near when, by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.
7. I don't take drugs: I am drugs.
8. It is either easy or impossible.
9. Paranoiac-critical activity makes the world of delirium pass onto the plane of reality...
10. The reason that some portraits don't look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures.
11. The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.
12. The world will admire me. Perhaps I'll be despised and misunderstood, but I'll be a great genius, I'm certain of it.