Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.
Jean Cocteau
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Toward
Creation
Spirit
Reality
Appearances
Writing
Breakthrough
Contradiction
Unknown
Appearance
More quotes by Jean Cocteau
Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
Jean Cocteau
The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
Jean Cocteau
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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
The poet never asks for admiration he wants to be believed.
Jean Cocteau
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
Jean Cocteau
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
Jean Cocteau
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
Jean Cocteau
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau
Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
Jean Cocteau
The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
Jean Cocteau
I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.
Jean Cocteau
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
Jean Cocteau
Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
Jean Cocteau
The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
Jean Cocteau
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.
Jean Cocteau
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Jean Cocteau
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
Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
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
