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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.

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
Cursory
Glance
Glances
Recognized
Beauty
Cannot

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples one speaks of thieves.
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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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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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The joy of youth is to disobey but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
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The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
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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.
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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
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Keep braiding one's wavelengths back into oneself. That way they gain all the more external power and surround us with a huge affective and protective zone. Don't talk about this. Never talk about our secret methods. If we talk about them, they stop working.
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Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
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Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.
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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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The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
Jean Cocteau
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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.
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In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God's masterpiece to be a mistake.
Jean Cocteau
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Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play.
Jean Cocteau
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
Jean Cocteau