The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.
JEAN COCTEAUWe shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Art is science in the flesh.
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
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Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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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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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
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The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
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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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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.
JEAN COCTEAU






