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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

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
Indispensable
Poetry
Knew
Art

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
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The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
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The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
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The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
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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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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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Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
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Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
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Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
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It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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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.
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
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