Cocteau's Quotes
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Cocteau's Quotes & Sayings
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Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it's a miracle that we don't dissolve in our baths.
— Jean Cocteau
One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.
— Jean Cocteau
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
— Jean Cocteau
Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection.
— Jean Cocteau
One should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started
— Jean Cocteau
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
— Jean Cocteau
His work kept on living, like the watches on the wrists of dead soldiers. [Said of Marcel Proust]
— Jean Cocteau
Art is science in the flesh.
— Jean Cocteau
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
— Jean Cocteau
There are poets and there are grownups.
— Jean Cocteau
Be yourself. The world worships the original.
— Jean Cocteau
The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
— Jean Cocteau
The only way to kill death is through photography.
— Jean Cocteau
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
— Jean Cocteau
Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.
— Jean Cocteau
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
— Jean Cocteau
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
— Jean Cocteau
And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
— Jean Cocteau
Poetry is a religion with no hope.
— Jean Cocteau
Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
— Jean Cocteau
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
— Jean Cocteau
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
— Jean Cocteau
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
— Jean Cocteau
He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
— Jean Cocteau
Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.
— Jean Cocteau
There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.
— Jean Cocteau
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
— Jean Cocteau
Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. It insists on living its own life.
— Jean Cocteau
Without resistance you can do nothing.
— Jean Cocteau
Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.
— Jean Cocteau
Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
— Jean Cocteau
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
— Jean Cocteau
We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame.
— Jean Cocteau
I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.
— Jean Cocteau
It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
— Jean Cocteau
It is dangerous not to conform with people's image of us, because they do not readily retract their opinions.
— Jean Cocteau
Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
— Jean Cocteau
People seek escape in myth by any means at their disposal, including drugs, alcohol, meditation, and lies.
— Jean Cocteau
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
— Jean Cocteau
The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.
— Jean Cocteau
Cocteau is someone who has made such a profound impression on me that there's no doubt he's influenced every one of my films.
— Jacques Rivette
There's no such thing as love; only proof of love.
— Jean Cocteau
Silence moves faster when it's going backward.
— Jean Cocteau
We only serve as a model to the portrait of our fame
— Jean Cocteau
The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.
— Jean Cocteau
We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
— Jean Cocteau
Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
— Jean Cocteau
Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo
— Jean Cocteau
The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
— Jean Cocteau
A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.
— Jean Cocteau
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
— Jean Cocteau
The knack is art.
— Jean Cocteau
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
— Jean Cocteau
The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
— Jean Cocteau
See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
— Jean Cocteau
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
— Jean Cocteau
Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture.
— Jean Cocteau
The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
— Jean Cocteau
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
— Jean Cocteau
Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
— Jean Cocteau
Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
— Jean Cocteau
Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
— Jean Cocteau
One must not mistake majority for truth.
— Jean Cocteau
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
— Jean Cocteau
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
— Jean Cocteau
Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
— Jean Cocteau
The obstinate miner of the void
exploits
his fertile mine — Jean Cocteau
Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
— Jean Cocteau
Each day in the mirror I watch death at work.
— Jean Cocteau
I feel myself inhabited by a force or being very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow. — Jean Cocteau
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
— Jean Cocteau
Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.
— Jean Cocteau
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
— Jean Cocteau
Good music resembles something. It resembles the composer.
— Jean Cocteau