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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.

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
Eyes
Require
Taken
Illegal
Dark
Realization
Eye
Instinct
Learn
Angel
Realizations
Might
Follow
Unawares
Self
Close
Truest
Men
Risk
Instincts

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!
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The artist must know how far to go too far.
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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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The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.
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Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.
Jean Cocteau
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
Jean Cocteau
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Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.
Jean Cocteau
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
Jean Cocteau
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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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Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
Jean Cocteau
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
Jean Cocteau
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one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started
Jean Cocteau
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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples one speaks of thieves.
Jean Cocteau
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
Jean Cocteau
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
Jean Cocteau