Jean Cocteau famous quotes

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Cat #Home #Animal

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

#Fashion #Simple #Style

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Funny #Hilarious #Sexy

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Art #Conscious #Art Is

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Inspirational #Beautiful #Fashion

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

#Art #Priesthood #Art Is

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Music #Feelings #Mysterious

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
-- Jean Cocteau

#News #Pieces

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Addiction #Body

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Liars #Lying #Poetry

Art is science in the flesh.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Art #Philosophy #History

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Rose #Nurse #Poetry

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

#Men #Doe #Lasts

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

#Dream #Becoming #Poet

There are poets and there are grownups.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Poetry #Poet #Grownups

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Art #Speak #Plant

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Writing #Knack #Painting

History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Lying #Reality #Fables

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

#Mirrors #Littles #Wells

Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Ties #Handwriting #Poet

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

#Exhibitions #Publicity

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

#Attitude #Mind #May

I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Veins #Language #Wave

To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Manners #Tact #Audacious

Living is a horizontal fall.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Fall

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Editors #Acting #Criticism

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

#Time #Behinds

Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Gay #Blame

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

#Animal #Pet #Outstanding

Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Earth #Moments #Nothingness

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Artist #Order #Originality

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

#Life #Children #Cutting

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

#Paris #Actors #Want

Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Teaching #Recovery #Addiction

The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Wisdom #Mind #Limits

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Art #Paper #Film

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
-- Jean Cocteau

#Inspirational #Funny #Witty

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Art #Gambling #Film

Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Knowing #Audacity #Courtesy

Poetry is indispensable --if I only knew what for.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Art #Poetry #Indispensable

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

#Travel #Car #Massage

I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love
-- Jean Cocteau

#People

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

#Criticism #Criticize #Critics

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Misunderstood #Tragedy #Poetic

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

#Order #Giving #Littles

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Lying #Mean #Men

Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Artist #Asking #Plant

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Love #Moving #Racing

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

#Art #Congratulations #Giving

And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Hate #Simple #Men

You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
-- Jean Cocteau

#Glasses #Mirrors #Looks

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

#Death #Reading #Long