Quote

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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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
Better
Lesser
Thing
Delicate
Make
Appears
Never
Discover
Despair
Finesse
Lose
Specialist
Loses
Specialty
Force
Specialists

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The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
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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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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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Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.
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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders I follow.
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Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
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And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
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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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Perhaps I know to what extent I can go too far.
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
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The poet Paul Éluard says that to understand my film version of Beauty and the Beast, you must love your dog more than your car.
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My only politics have been friendship.
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Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.
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The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
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Art is science made flesh.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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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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