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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.

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
Fables
Combination
Lies
Becomes
Lying
History
Reality
Fable
Truth
Unreality

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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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.
Jean Cocteau
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To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
Jean Cocteau
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Art is science made flesh.
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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At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
Jean Cocteau
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I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.
Jean Cocteau
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Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house.
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.
Jean Cocteau
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
Jean Cocteau
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Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
Jean Cocteau
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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
Jean Cocteau
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A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
Jean Cocteau
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
Jean Cocteau
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See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
Jean Cocteau
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
Jean Cocteau
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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