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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders I follow.

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
Feels
Follow
Giving
Gives
Known
Force
Order
Littles
Little
Inhabited
Feel
Orders

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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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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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
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The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.
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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.
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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 preservation of friendship is seen as opportunism. You are required to be in one camp or the other. You are enjoined to cut your heartstrings if they extend across the barricade.
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Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo
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Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
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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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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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The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
Jean Cocteau
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The Louvre is a morgue you go there to identify your friends.
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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 ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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