"Don't for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels."
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Quote collection
Jean Cocteau quotes (page 5 of 11)
215 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents; what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house."
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"Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time."
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"I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality."
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"The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up."
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"What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you."
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"Silence moves faster when it's going backward."
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"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."
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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."
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"The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders."
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"Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture."
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"If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it."
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"The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed."
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"One must not mistake majority for truth."
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"The only way to kill death is through photography."
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"My only politics have been friendship."
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"When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality."
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"Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept."
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"Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself."
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"Art is science in the flesh."
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