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

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.
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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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The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
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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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It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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The hot hall full of painted girls and American soldiers is a saloon in some Western film. This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path.
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
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The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
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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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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.
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One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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The audience bursts into laughter. With the tragic gag I don't expect the audience to laugh (if they do, I have failed) but I expect a black silence from them that is almost as violent: as laughter.
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Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
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The joy of the young is to disobey
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
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And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
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