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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.

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
The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
JEAN COCTEAU

Beautiful Clothes Sex
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
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 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

Art Artist Bad Fame Give Up Reward Success
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
JEAN COCTEAU

Himself Poet Rose True
I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
JEAN COCTEAU

Language Myself Nature Ocean Understand
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU

Animal Count Horse Speed Wasted
Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
JEAN COCTEAU

Achievement Elegant Hope Life Live Poetry
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
JEAN COCTEAU

Believe Explanation Luck
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
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
JEAN COCTEAU

Children Mad Patience Poet Try
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
JEAN COCTEAU

Feeling Goodness Motivational Music Mystery Object
I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Fear Love Myself People
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
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

Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.

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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.

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Popular Authors

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