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

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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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 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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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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Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
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I am burning myself up and will always do so.
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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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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
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Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
Jean Cocteau
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Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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The joy of the young is to disobey
Jean Cocteau
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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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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Jean Cocteau
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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
Jean Cocteau
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
Jean Cocteau
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
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Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.
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You have comfort. You don't have luxury. And don't tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
Jean Cocteau