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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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
Priesthood
Art
Pastime
More quotes by Jean Cocteau
How our old friend [Michelangelo] of the Sistine would have loved to photograph his workers, perched on the fragile planks. Dali was right to say Leonardo only worked from photographs.
Jean Cocteau
I love cats because I enjoy my home and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau
May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
Jean Cocteau
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
The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
Jean Cocteau
See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
Jean Cocteau
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Jean Cocteau
Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
Jean Cocteau
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
Jean Cocteau
To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
Jean Cocteau
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Jean Cocteau
The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
Jean Cocteau
I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders I follow.
Jean Cocteau
Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
Jean Cocteau
And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
Jean Cocteau
Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
Jean Cocteau
You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.
Jean Cocteau
Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.
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
Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.
Jean Cocteau
