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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.

Jean Cocteau

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
JEAN COCTEAU

Character Dreams Friendship Habit Live Regret Stranger Surprise
The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
JEAN COCTEAU

Artist Escape Kind Prison Work
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

Death Mirror See Yourself
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Live Myself Teaching Try
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

Disappoint Experience Friendship Love Short
Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
JEAN COCTEAU

Creativity Inspirational Motivational World Yourself
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
JEAN COCTEAU

Animal Cat Enjoyment Home Love Myself Soul Visible
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 COCTEAU

Force Habit Learning Object Place Poet Position Soul Tragedy Visible World
Living is a horizontal fall.
JEAN COCTEAU

Fall Live One Liner Perspective
My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
JEAN COCTEAU

Drive Myself Name Poetry Simplicity Wait
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

Creation Force Himself Language Live Manipulation People Poem Poet Understand
It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.
JEAN COCTEAU

Difficult Earth Live Serious
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
JEAN COCTEAU

Children Mad Patience Poet Try
The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
JEAN COCTEAU

Call Limitation Public Wisdom
Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
JEAN COCTEAU

Day Death Mirror Myself Work
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
JEAN COCTEAU

Audacity Far Journey Yourself

Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.

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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.

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