Jean Cocteau Quotes

• A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.

  Jean Cocteau

  Photographer, Poet, Painter

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• I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love

  Jean Cocteau

  People

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• 

  I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

  Jean Cocteau

  Dog, Home, Cat

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• Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

  Jean Cocteau

  Fashion, Simple, Style

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• Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.

  Jean Cocteau

  Thinking, Mirrors, Appearance

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• Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.

  Jean Cocteau

  Glances

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• Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.

  Jean Cocteau

  Art, Lying, Reality

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

  Jean Cocteau

  Art, Speak, Plant

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• Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

  Jean Cocteau

  Death, Ugly Things, Dying

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• If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.

  Jean Cocteau

  Dream, Becoming, Poet

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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 perform-ance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.

  Jean Cocteau

  Running, Dog, Knowing

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• Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.

  Jean Cocteau

  What Matters, Past Present Future, Earth

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• The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

  Jean Cocteau

  Funny, Hilarious, Sexy

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• Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

  Jean Cocteau

  Art, Conscious, Art Is

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• I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.

  Jean Cocteau

  Veins, Language, Wave

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• An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

  Jean Cocteau

  Artist, Order, Original Art

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• Living is a horizontal fall.

  Jean Cocteau

  Fall, Horizontal

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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.

  Jean Cocteau

  Love, Moving, Drug

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• Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.

  Jean Cocteau

  Venture, Youth, Conviction

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• What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist's presence makes itself felt above that of the model. With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul's style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.

  Jean Cocteau

  Running, Writing, Eye

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• We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?

  Jean Cocteau

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

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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.

  Jean Cocteau

  Glasses, Mirrors, Advice

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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.

  Jean Cocteau

  Art, Jobs, Giving

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• Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.

  Jean Cocteau

  Beautiful, Beautiful Women, Figures

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• French people are Italian people in a bad mood.

  Jean Cocteau

  Country, Italian, Europe

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