Jean Cocteau

A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system. … The craving for opium can be endured in a car.

— Jean Cocteau

If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.

— 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.

— Jean Cocteau

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

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

— Jean Cocteau

Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.

— Jean Cocteau

People would say to Al Brown: "You are not a boxer. You are a dancer." He laughed at this, and won.

— Jean Cocteau

Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection.

— Jean Cocteau

Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.

— Jean Cocteau

One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.

— Jean Cocteau

Hasten slowly. Run faster than beauty.

— Jean Cocteau

Find first, seek later.

— Jean Cocteau

Be helpful, even if it compromises you.

— Jean Cocteau

Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.

— Jean Cocteau

He who is affected by an insult is infected by it.

— Jean Cocteau

Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.

— Jean Cocteau

Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.

— Jean Cocteau

Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.

— Jean Cocteau

Do not close the circle. Leave it open. Descartes closes the circle. Pascal leaves it open. Rousseau's triumph over the encyclopedists is to have left his circle open when they closed theirs.

— Jean Cocteau

Allow the power of the soul to grow as flagrant as the power of sex.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.

— Jean Cocteau

Hate only hatred.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

Disavow anyone who provokes or accepts the extermination of a race to which he does not belong.

— Jean Cocteau

Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.

— Jean Cocteau

Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical.

— Jean Cocteau

Know that your work speaks only to those on the same wavelength as you.

— Jean Cocteau

Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.

— Jean Cocteau

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.

— Jean Cocteau

Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value.

— Jean Cocteau

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal... unnable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort, the trifling feeling of escape experienced at a masked ball. He distances himself from that which he feels and sees. He invents. He transfigures. He mythifies. He creates. He fancies himself an artist. He imitates, in his small way, the painters he claims are mad.

— Jean Cocteau

Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term "escapism," when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow oneself to be invaded?

— Jean Cocteau

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.

— Jean Cocteau

Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative. This personal morality may appear to be immorality itself in the eyes of those who lie to themselves, or who live a life of confusion, in such a manner that, for them, a lie becomes the truth, and our truth becomes a lie...

— Jean Cocteau

Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.

— Jean Cocteau

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

— Jean Cocteau

A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: "Paul's dying; Paul's going to die"' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.

— Jean Cocteau

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!

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

— Jean Cocteau

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

— Jean Cocteau

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.

— Jean Cocteau

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

— Jean Cocteau

A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.

— Jean Cocteau

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

— Jean Cocteau

The Louvre is like the morgue; one goes there to identify one’s friends.

— Jean Cocteau

Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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.

— Jean Cocteau

What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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.

— Jean Cocteau

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

— Jean Cocteau

The trouble about the Académie is that by the time they get around to electing us to a seat, we really need a bed.

— Jean Cocteau

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?

— Jean Cocteau

What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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.

— Jean Cocteau

Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for.

— Jean Cocteau

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.

— Jean Cocteau

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

— Jean Cocteau

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

That pile of paper on his left side went on living like the watch on a dead soldier’s wrist.

— Jean Cocteau

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

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

— Jean Cocteau

Don’t for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels.

— Jean Cocteau

He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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, they finish by loading honors on your head.

— Jean Cocteau

The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

The joy of youth is to disobey, but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

— Jean Cocteau

Art is science made clear.

— Jean Cocteau

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

— Jean Cocteau

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.

— Jean Cocteau

Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.

— Jean Cocteau

The extreme limit of wisdom — that’s what the public calls madness.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.

— Jean Cocteau

We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.

— Jean Cocteau

Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.

— Jean Cocteau

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

Life is a horizontal fall.

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo.

— Jean Cocteau

Life is a horizontal fall.

— Jean Cocteau

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.

— Jean Cocteau