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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
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
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Painter
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Poet
Postage Stamp Designer
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Clément Eugène Jean Pierre Cocteau
Zhan Kokto
Eugène Jean Maurice Cocteau
Eugene Jean Maurice Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Math
Draftsman
Mathematics
Arithmetic
Door
Cage
Doors
Cages
Gives
Geometry
Freedom
Opens
Giving
Composer
Mathematical
More quotes by Jean Cocteau
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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I am burning myself up and will always do so.
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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.
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My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them.
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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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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Jean Cocteau
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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The audience bursts into laughter. With the tragic gag I don't expect the audience to laugh (if they do, I have failed) but I expect a black silence from them that is almost as violent: as laughter.
Jean Cocteau
The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
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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.
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The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.
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Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
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Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo
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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 speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
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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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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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A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
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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.
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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
