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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
Courtesy
Manners
Knowing
Without
Going
Audacity
Tact

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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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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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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.
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
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Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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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.
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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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Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
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Perhaps I know to what extent I can go too far.
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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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