Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Jean Cocteau

Biography : French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker.
Born: 1889 - Died: 1963
Period:
20th century
19th century
Place of birth: France
France

Jean Cocteau - Quotes

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
Jean Cocteau /

Cinema is the form of modern writing whose ink is light.
Jean Cocteau /

When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin /

time

Tact in audacity consists in knowing how far you can go too far.
Jean Cocteau /

The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
Jean Cocteau /

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.
Jean Cocteau

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
Jean Cocteau

Poet

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin

artist

After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
Jean Cocteau

death

Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical.
Jean Cocteau /

Art is science made clear.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin

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 Cocteau

Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for.
Jean Cocteau /

poetry

Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
Jean Cocteau /

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin

artist

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.
Jean Cocteau

poetry

There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
Jean Cocteau /

death

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin

Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
Jean Cocteau

habit

Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images.
Jean Cocteau

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
Jean Cocteau

thought

Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
Jean Cocteau

beauty

Find first, seek later.
Jean Cocteau

We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
Jean Cocteau - Le Coq et l’Arlequin /

The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
Jean Cocteau /

death

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.
Jean Cocteau /

Poet

Jean Cocteau - Quotes

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