The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
JEAN COCTEAUA true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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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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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.
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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
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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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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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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.
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You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
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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.
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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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.
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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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I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
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We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
JEAN COCTEAU