Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
JEAN COCTEAUWhat the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
-
-
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
JEAN COCTEAU -
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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 -
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
JEAN COCTEAU -
The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Art is science in the flesh.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
JEAN COCTEAU -
I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
JEAN COCTEAU -
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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 -
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 -
Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
JEAN COCTEAU -
We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
JEAN COCTEAU