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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.

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
Knowing
Without
Going
Audacity
Tact
Courtesy
Manners

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The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
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True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
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It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
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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.
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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.
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I am burning myself up and will always do so.
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See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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I have never felt any connection with my family. There is—I must say simply—something in me that is not in my family. That was not visible in my father or mother. I do not know its origin.
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The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
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You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.
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I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.
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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.
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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
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