The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
JEAN COCTEAUThe extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
JEAN COCTEAUWhatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
JEAN COCTEAUThe reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
JEAN COCTEAUArt produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
JEAN COCTEAUYouth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAUThe ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
JEAN COCTEAUArt is not a pastime but a priesthood.
JEAN COCTEAUI’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
JEAN COCTEAUA true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
JEAN COCTEAUArt is science in the flesh.
JEAN COCTEAUSilence moves faster when it’s going backward.
JEAN COCTEAUDo as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
JEAN COCTEAUSuch 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 COCTEAUAnything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
JEAN COCTEAUI love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
JEAN COCTEAUHere I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
JEAN COCTEAU