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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.

Jean Cocteau

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

Achievement Elegant Hope Life Live Poetry
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
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
JEAN COCTEAU

Criticism Cultivate Hate Inspirational Motivational Public Yourself
The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
JEAN COCTEAU

Artist Escape Kind Prison Work
The joy of the young is to disobey.
JEAN COCTEAU

Joy Obey One Liner Young
Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
JEAN COCTEAU

Criticism Cultivate Hate Unique Work Yourself
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Artist Discussion Plant Talk Voice
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
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU

Animal Count Horse Speed Wasted
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
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Moral Praise
Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Lying Preference Reality
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
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
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
JEAN COCTEAU

Fight Humor Intuition Mad Worst
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU

Action Appearance Youth

Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.

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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.

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Popular Authors

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