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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

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
Must
Men
Posthumous
Living
Artist
Art

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
Jean Cocteau
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The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
Jean Cocteau
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What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things.
Jean Cocteau
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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
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It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
Jean Cocteau
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The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.
Jean Cocteau
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And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
Jean Cocteau
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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Jean Cocteau
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Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
Jean Cocteau
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Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
Jean Cocteau
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
Jean Cocteau
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
Jean Cocteau
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My only politics have been friendship.
Jean Cocteau
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
Jean Cocteau
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There's no such thing as love only proof of love.
Jean Cocteau
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Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.
Jean Cocteau
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Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau