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Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.

Jean Cocteau

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
JEAN COCTEAU

Discipline Oneself Period Talk Theft
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
Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
JEAN COCTEAU

Creativity Inspirational Motivational World Yourself
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
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.
JEAN COCTEAU

Animal Dog Hope Performance Poetry Religion Service Training
Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Lying Preference Reality
I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
JEAN COCTEAU

Deep Difference History Illusion Myth Mythology Perspective Reality Truth
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
Living is a horizontal fall.
JEAN COCTEAU

Fall Live One Liner Perspective
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
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.
JEAN COCTEAU

Display Disturb Myself Paint Writing
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
JEAN COCTEAU

Fight Humor Intuition Mad Worst
Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
JEAN COCTEAU

Forever God Infinity Mystery Ourselves
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Past Religious Time
One must not mistake majority for truth.
JEAN COCTEAU

Deep Mistake One Liner Oneself Truth
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
JEAN COCTEAU

Artist Cost Material Money Movie

Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.

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Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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