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 COCTEAUContinue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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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.
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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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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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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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One must not mistake majority for truth.
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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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Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
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I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
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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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If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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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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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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The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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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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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.
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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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