Quotes By Jean Cocteau

There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.

The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.

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.

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.

The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.

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.

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.