Quote

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

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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There's no such thing as love only proof of love.
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Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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The joy of the young is to disobey
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See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.
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The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
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Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
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The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.
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Keep braiding one's wavelengths back into oneself. That way they gain all the more external power and surround us with a huge affective and protective zone. Don't talk about this. Never talk about our secret methods. If we talk about them, they stop working.
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one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started
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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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At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.
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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.
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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 preservation of friendship is seen as opportunism. You are required to be in one camp or the other. You are enjoined to cut your heartstrings if they extend across the barricade.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
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