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

Jean Cocteau

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Jean Cocteau
Age: 74 †
Born: 1889
Born: July 5
Died: 1963
Died: October 11
Actor
Composer
Designer
Film Director
Illustrator
Librettist
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Playwright
Poet
Postage Stamp Designer
Prosaist
Clément Eugène Jean Pierre Cocteau
Zhan Kokto
Eugène Jean Maurice Cocteau
Eugene Jean Maurice Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Good
Resembles
Resemblance
Motivated
Mysterious
Objects
Feelings
Music
Something
Stirs

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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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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It is not inspiration it is expiration.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
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Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
Jean Cocteau
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
Jean Cocteau
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.
Jean Cocteau
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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
Jean Cocteau
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The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
Jean Cocteau
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What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.
Jean Cocteau
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Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play.
Jean Cocteau
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them.
Jean Cocteau
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Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
Jean Cocteau
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The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.
Jean Cocteau
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One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
Jean Cocteau
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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
Jean Cocteau