Art is science in the flesh.
JEAN COCTEAUNever 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
-
-
I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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 -
Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
JEAN COCTEAU -
Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
JEAN COCTEAU -
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
JEAN COCTEAU -
We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
JEAN COCTEAU -
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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.
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 -
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
JEAN COCTEAU -
I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
JEAN COCTEAU -
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
JEAN COCTEAU -
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 -
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