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Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.

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
Erection
Appreciation
Critics
Otherwise
Mere
Moral
Art
Dilettantism

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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I love cats because I enjoy my home and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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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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Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
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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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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
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The artist must know how far to go too far.
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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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One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
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Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
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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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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Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house.
Jean Cocteau
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
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I am burning myself up and will always do so.
Jean Cocteau