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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

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

Appearance Better Delicate Discover Force Lose Yourself
Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
JEAN COCTEAU

Myself Poetry Reason
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
It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.
JEAN COCTEAU

Difficult Earth Live Serious
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
JEAN COCTEAU

Best Friendship God Lost Mercy Myself
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
JEAN COCTEAU

Himself Poet Rose True
The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
JEAN COCTEAU

Call Limitation Public Wisdom
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
JEAN COCTEAU

Deep Lying One Liner Poet Talk Truth
The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Drugs Ghost Home
Art is science in the flesh.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Body One Liner Science
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
JEAN COCTEAU

Myself Poetry Talk
Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Expression Life Love Oneself Training
I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
JEAN COCTEAU

Language Myself Nature Ocean Understand
Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
JEAN COCTEAU

Day Death Mirror Myself Work
After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Journal Receive Writing
Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Lying Preference Reality
Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
JEAN COCTEAU

Funny Magic Miracle Ourselves Water
The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
JEAN COCTEAU

Artist Escape Kind Prison Work
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

Alcohol Comfortable Drugs Escape Lying Man Moments Myth Seek
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
JEAN COCTEAU

Image Mirror Reflection
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
JEAN COCTEAU

Complication Simplicity Style Way
The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Eyes Live
Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
JEAN COCTEAU

Beautiful Curse Recognition
My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
JEAN COCTEAU

Drive Myself Name Poetry Simplicity Wait
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU

Action Appearance Youth
A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
JEAN COCTEAU

Artist Paint Photograph Poet Rare True
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

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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