Jean Cocteau Quotes - Page 6

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• Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.

  Jean Cocteau

  Half, Assistants, Unconscious

  "Cock and harlequin: Notes concerning music". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1921.

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• There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.

  Jean Cocteau

  Ugly Things, Virtue

  "Cock and harlequin: Notes concerning music". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1921.

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• He who is affected by an insult is infected by it.

  Jean Cocteau

  Insult, Affected

  "Diary of an Unknown". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1988.

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• Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

  Jean Cocteau

  Ties, Handwriting, Unraveling

  Quoted by Pierre Chanel in "A Thousand Flashes of Genius", "Jean Cocteau and the French Scene". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1984.

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• What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.

  Jean Cocteau

  Depression, Heart, Uniforms

  Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crosland (1972). “Cocteau's world: an anthology of writings”, Owen

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• The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

  Jean Cocteau

  Life, Art, Philosophy

  Jean Cocteau (1957). “The Holy Terrors”, p.170, New Directions Publishing

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• The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.

  Jean Cocteau

  Acceptance, Rivers, Source

  Jean Cocteau (1926). “A call to order: written between the years 1918 and 1926 and including Cock and harlequin, Professional secrets, and other critical essays”, Haskell House Pub Ltd

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• Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

  Jean Cocteau

  Fall, Writing, Play

  Vogue Magazine, May 1983.

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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.

  Jean Cocteau

  People, Use, Language

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• I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.

  Jean Cocteau

  Friendship, Realizing, Mercy

  Vogue, May 1984.

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• People seek escape in myth by any means at their disposal, including drugs, alcohol, meditation, and lies.

  Jean Cocteau

  Lying, Mean, People

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• The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.

  Jean Cocteau

  Done, Copies

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• Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.

  Jean Cocteau

  Visibility, Elegance, Achieve

  "Diary of an Unknown". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1988.

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• It was the East that should have sent us missionaries.

  Jean Cocteau

  Should Have, East, Should

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

  Jean Cocteau

  Reality, Habit, Revealing

  "Le Mystère Laïc". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1928.

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• Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.

  Jean Cocteau

  Childhood, Want, Behinds

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• The artist must know how far to go too far.

  Jean Cocteau

  Artist, Know How, Knows

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• The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.

  Jean Cocteau

  Humble, Night, House

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• 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

  Jobs, Light, Done

  "A Call to Order". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1926.

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• If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

  Jean Cocteau

  Addiction, House, Smoking

  Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crosland (1972). “Cocteau's world: an anthology of writings”, Owen

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• The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies; but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.

  Jean Cocteau

  Enchantment, World, Fancy

  Jean Cocteau (1966). “The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles)”, p.84, New Directions Publishing

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• History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.

  Jean Cocteau

  Lying, Reality, Fables

  Journal d'un inconnu (Diary of an Unknown Man, 1953) p. 143

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• There are poets and there are grownups.

  Jean Cocteau

  Poetry, Poet, Grownups

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• A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.

  Jean Cocteau

  Travel, Car, Massage

  "Opium: The Diary of His Cure". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1930.

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• After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

  Jean Cocteau

  Death, Reading, Long

  Jean Cocteau, Pierre Chanel (1988). “Past tense: diaries”, Harcourt

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