Jean Cocteau Quotes - Page 7

Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.

To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.

Perhaps I know to what extent I can go too far.

Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.

All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms

Art is science made flesh.

What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show. Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.

Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!

The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.

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

He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.

The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery.

What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.

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

How our old friend [Michelangelo] of the Sistine would have loved to photograph his workers, perched on the fragile planks. Dali was right to say Leonardo only worked from photographs.

The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.

Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.

In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God's masterpiece to be a mistake.

A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: "Paul's dying; Paul's going to die"' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.

The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.

Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.

The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.

The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.

What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things.