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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.

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
Men
Monster
Monsters
Mysterious
Allow
Mistake
Since
Cogs
Society
Considers
Live
Masterpiece

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Jean Cocteau
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Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
Jean Cocteau
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What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show. Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.
Jean Cocteau
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Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
Jean Cocteau
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The poet never asks for admiration he wants to be believed.
Jean Cocteau
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Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it.
Jean Cocteau
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True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
Jean Cocteau
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
Jean Cocteau
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The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
Jean Cocteau
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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
Jean Cocteau
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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
Jean Cocteau
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
Jean Cocteau
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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
Jean Cocteau
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
Jean Cocteau
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Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
Jean Cocteau
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My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them.
Jean Cocteau
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
Jean Cocteau