Jean Cocteau quotes - page 5

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing. (Jean Cocteau)
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
Jean Cocteau
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!
Jean Cocteau
Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
Jean Cocteau
What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.
Jean Cocteau
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.
Jean Cocteau
one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started.
Jean Cocteau
Allow the power of the soul to grow as flagrant as the power of sex.
Jean Cocteau
Disavow anyone who provokes or accepts the extermination of a race to which he does not belong.
Jean Cocteau
Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term "escapism," when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow oneself to be invaded?
Jean Cocteau
Be helpful, even if it compromises you. (Jean Cocteau)
People would say to Al Brown: "You are not a boxer. You are a dancer." He laughed at this, and won.
Jean Cocteau
Hasten slowly. Run faster than beauty.
Jean Cocteau
Know that your work speaks only to those on the same wavelength as you.
Jean Cocteau
A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system. ... The craving for opium can be endured in a car.
Jean Cocteau
Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical.
Jean Cocteau
Hate only hatred.
Jean Cocteau
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Jean Cocteau
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
Jean Cocteau
Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
Jean Cocteau
History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end. (Jean Cocteau)
Silence moves faster when it's going backward.
Jean Cocteau
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.
Jean Cocteau
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.
Jean Cocteau
What is line It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist's presence makes itself felt above that of the model. With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul's style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.
Jean Cocteau