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I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.

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
Realizing
Friends
Times
Lent
Lost
Sent
Another
Mercy
Best
Seven
Without
Friendship
Took

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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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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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
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The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
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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.
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Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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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 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.
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The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.
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The hot hall full of painted girls and American soldiers is a saloon in some Western film. This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path.
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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders I follow.
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
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Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
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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.
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History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.
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I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
Jean Cocteau