Jean Cocteau Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Jean Cocteau

  Friendship, Realizing, Mercy

  Vogue, May 1984.

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• The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.

  Jean Cocteau

  Acceptance, Rivers, Source

  Jean Cocteau (1926). “A call to order: written between the years 1918 and 1926 and including Cock and harlequin, Professional secrets, and other critical essays”, Haskell House Pub Ltd

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• The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.

  Jean Cocteau

  Done, Copies

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• Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

  Jean Cocteau

  Fall, Writing, Play

  Vogue Magazine, May 1983.

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• People seek escape in myth by any means at their disposal, including drugs, alcohol, meditation, and lies.

  Jean Cocteau

  Lying, Mean, People

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• It was the East that should have sent us missionaries.

  Jean Cocteau

  Should Have, East, Should

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• True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.

  Jean Cocteau

  Reality, Habit, Revealing

  "Le Mystère Laïc". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1928.

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• Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.

  Jean Cocteau

  Childhood, Want, Behinds

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• The artist must know how far to go too far.

  Jean Cocteau

  Artist, Know How, Knows

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• The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.

  Jean Cocteau

  Humble, Night, House

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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.

  Jean Cocteau

  Jobs, Light, Done

  "A Call to Order". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1926.

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• If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

  Jean Cocteau

  Addiction, House, Smoking

  Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crosland (1972). “Cocteau's world: an anthology of writings”, Owen

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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

  Enchantment, World, Fancy

  Jean Cocteau (1966). “The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles)”, p.84, New Directions Publishing

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• History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.

  Jean Cocteau

  Lying, Reality, Fables

  Journal d'un inconnu (Diary of an Unknown Man, 1953) p. 143

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• There are poets and there are grownups.

  Jean Cocteau

  Poetry, Poet, Grownups

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• A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.

  Jean Cocteau

  Travel, Car, Massage

  "Opium: The Diary of His Cure". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1930.

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

  Jean Cocteau

  Death, Reading, Long

  Jean Cocteau, Pierre Chanel (1988). “Past tense: diaries”, Harcourt

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• The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.

  Jean Cocteau

  Attitude, Reality, Balance

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• Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images.

  Jean Cocteau

  Mirrors, Littles, Wells

  Jean Cocteau (1949). “The blood of a poet”

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• The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

  Jean Cocteau

  Poetry, Poetic, Invention

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

  Jean Cocteau

  Museums, Louvre, Morgues

  Quoted by Roger Shattuck in "A Native Son of Paris", "Jean Cocteau and the French Scene". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1984.

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• Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.

  Jean Cocteau

  Men, Stones, Lifetime

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• Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture.

  Jean Cocteau

  Artist, Speak, Plant

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• One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.

  Jean Cocteau

  Time, Thinking, Firsts

  Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crosland (1972). “Cocteau's world: an anthology of writings”, Owen

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• Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.

  Jean Cocteau

  Hero, Manners

  Jean Cocteau (1990). “Opium: The Illustrated Diary of His Cure”, Peter Owen Publishers

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