black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

Jean Cocteau

Art 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 COCTEAU

Art Beautiful Fashion Hands Production Time Ugly
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Moral Praise
I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.
JEAN COCTEAU

Difference Follow Myself Road Room
After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Journal Receive Writing
We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
JEAN COCTEAU

Angel Home Protection Shelter
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
JEAN COCTEAU

Audacity Far Journey Yourself
Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
JEAN COCTEAU

Himself Reading Stupidity
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

Light Ourselves Poetry Record Role Strict Surprise Word
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Greatness Media Myself News Pieces Sad Yourself
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Conscious Deep Marriage Philosophy Spiritual
The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Drugs Ghost Home
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
JEAN COCTEAU

Choice Death Kill Option Save Torture
After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.
JEAN COCTEAU

Poison Reading Remove Temptation Writing Yourself
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
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
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.
JEAN COCTEAU

Care Criticism Listening Work Yourself

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Jean Cocteau Quotes