Jean Cocteau Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau 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

It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious. — Jean Cocteau

Everyone's pet is the most outstanding. This begets mutual blindness. — Jean Cocteau

Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself. — 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

Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept. — Jean Cocteau

There are poets and there are grownups. — Jean Cocteau

Don't for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels. — Jean Cocteau

Imitate, and what is personal will eventually come despite yourself. — 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

Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime. — Jean Cocteau

Catastrophe, riots, factories blowing up, armies in flight, flood - the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the starry night of the human body. — Jean Cocteau

I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes. — 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

There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them. — Jean Cocteau

The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source. — Jean Cocteau

Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. It insists on living its own life. — Jean Cocteau

I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say. — Jean Cocteau

Without resistance you can do nothing. — Jean Cocteau

Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique. — Jean Cocteau

We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame. — Jean Cocteau

One must not mistake majority for truth. — Jean Cocteau

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood. — Jean Cocteau

We only serve as a model to the portrait of our fame — Jean Cocteau

There's no such thing as love; only proof of love. — Jean Cocteau

The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far. — Jean Cocteau

The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality. — Jean Cocteau

When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work. — Jean Cocteau

Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma. — Jean Cocteau

Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images. — Jean Cocteau

Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture. — Jean Cocteau

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. — Jean Cocteau

A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter. — Jean Cocteau

A picture neither saddening nor gladdening I fear; neither beautiful nor ugly. — Jean Cocteau

After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting. — Jean Cocteau

Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo — Jean Cocteau

People seek escape in myth by any means at their disposal, including drugs, alcohol, meditation, and lies. — Jean Cocteau

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves. — Jean Cocteau

The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today. — 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

Silence moves faster when it's going backward. — Jean Cocteau

Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence. — Jean Cocteau

Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself. — 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 poet doesn't invent. He listens. — Jean Cocteau

Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism. — Jean Cocteau

Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally. — Jean Cocteau

Each day in the mirror I watch death at work. — 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

The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches. — Jean Cocteau

An artist cannot speak about his art anymore than a plant can discuss horticulture. — Jean Cocteau

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you. — Jean Cocteau

I expect a black silence that is almost as violent as laughter. — Jean Cocteau

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator. — Jean Cocteau

Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly. — 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

Beauty makes one lose one's head. Poetry is born of this decapitation — 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

Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities. — Jean Cocteau

I feel myself inhabited by a force or being
very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow. — Jean Cocteau

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. — Jean Cocteau

The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing. — Jean Cocteau

If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed. — 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

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter. — Jean Cocteau

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. — Jean Cocteau

Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them. — Jean Cocteau

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing. — Jean Cocteau

The obstinate miner
of the void
exploits
his fertile mine — Jean Cocteau

Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself. — Jean Cocteau

The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying. — Jean Cocteau

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike? — Jean Cocteau

It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed. — Jean Cocteau

I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition. — Jean Cocteau

Good music resembles something. It resembles the composer. — Jean Cocteau