Jean Cocteau Quotes

Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Find first, seek later.

All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms

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

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.

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

Art is science made flesh.

Respect movements, flee schools.

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

The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.

The hot hall full of painted girls and American soldiers is a saloon in some Western film. This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path.

Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.

Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection.

And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.

We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame.

The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.

A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.

The preservation of friendship is seen as opportunism. You are required to be in one camp or the other. You are enjoined to cut your heartstrings if they extend across the barricade.

The audience bursts into laughter. With the tragic gag I don't expect the audience to laugh (if they do, I have failed) but I expect a black silence from them that is almost as violent: as laughter.

One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.

You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.

Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.

Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.

I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.

one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started

Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.

Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it.

Good music resembles something. It resembles the composer.

Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.

Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.

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

Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.

Art is science made clear.

plantitIt will sproutBut forget about the rustic festivitiesFor the explosive word falls harmlessly eternal throughthe compact generations

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion on the other hand produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

Certainly I believe in luck. How else do you explain the success of those you don't like?

One sits down first one thinks afterwards.

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

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?

Life is a horizontal fall.