Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
JEAN COCTEAUBeauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
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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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When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
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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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Living is a horizontal fall.
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Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
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Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
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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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Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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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.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
JEAN COCTEAU