Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
JEAN COCTEAUPoetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
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When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
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You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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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.
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One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
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The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
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A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
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I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
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Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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One must not mistake majority for truth.
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Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
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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.
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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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.
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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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.
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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.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
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Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
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