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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.

Jean Cocteau

Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
JEAN COCTEAU

Achievement Elegant Hope Life Live Poetry
May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
JEAN COCTEAU

Devil Dirty Yourself
Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
JEAN COCTEAU

Help Important Recognition
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
JEAN COCTEAU

Believe Explanation Luck
I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
JEAN COCTEAU

Deep Difference History Illusion Myth Mythology Perspective Reality Truth
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
JEAN COCTEAU

Audacity Far Journey Yourself
We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
JEAN COCTEAU

Discipline Oneself Period Talk Theft
I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
JEAN COCTEAU

Control Feeling Myself
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Greatness Media Myself News Pieces Sad Yourself
Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
JEAN COCTEAU

Light Ourselves Poetry Record Role Strict Surprise Word
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

Poison Reading Remove Temptation Writing Yourself
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 Artist Bad Fame Give Up Reward Success
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

Death Expression Life Love Oneself Training
The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
JEAN COCTEAU

Beautiful Clothes Sex
Poetry is a religion with no hope.
JEAN COCTEAU

Hope One Liner Poet Poetry Religion
Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
JEAN COCTEAU

Himself Reading Stupidity

Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.

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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.

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