Jean Cocteau Quotes - Page 5

Everyone's pet is the most outstanding. This begets mutual blindness.

Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.

Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.

I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.

Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.

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.

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.

The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.

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

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

There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.

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.

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.

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

Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.

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.

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.

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