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 artist must know how far to go too far.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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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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Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
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Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it.
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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 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 public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God's masterpiece to be a mistake.
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The joy of the young is to disobey
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The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.
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The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery.
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
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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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