When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
JEAN COCTEAUWhatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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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.
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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.
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The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
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The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
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Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
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Art is science in the flesh.
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I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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