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 COCTEAUThe extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
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One must not mistake majority for truth.
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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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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If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
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The joy of the young is to disobey.
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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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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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
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Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
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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.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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The only way to kill death is through photography.
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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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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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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.
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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.
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
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