I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
JEAN COCTEAUWhen a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
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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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A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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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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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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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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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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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
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Art is science in the flesh.
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I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
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One must not mistake majority for truth.
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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
JEAN COCTEAU