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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.

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
Discipline
Constructed
Behavior
Ethic
Poetry
Imperatives
Secret
Capability
Categorical
Mean
Rejects
Falsification
Men
Code
Conducted
Ethics
Capabilities
According
Imperative

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.
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Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
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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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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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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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What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show. Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.
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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.
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Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
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Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
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I am burning myself up and will always do so.
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In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor nobody is content to be a spectator.
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It is not inspiration it is expiration.
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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
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Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
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To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
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The artist must know how far to go too far.
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