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
Topics: Wealth
Tact is knowing how far to go too far.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Tact
Of course I believe in luck. How otherwise to explain the success of some people you detest?
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Luck
The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Obedience
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Death, Dying
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
Topics: Drugs
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
If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Poverty
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Style
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Cats
I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am constantly shocking.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Angels
The extreme limit of wisdom—that’s what the public calls madness.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Madness, Mind, Wisdom
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Art
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
Topics: Poetry, Poets
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Admiration
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Art
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Criticism, Critics
One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: One Step at a Time
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Arts, Artists, Art
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
Topics: Art, Fashion
Art is science made clear.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Arts, Artists, Art
Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Youth
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Literature, Books
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Carpe-diem
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: The Body, Defects
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
Topics: Men
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Luck
You have comfort.
—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
Topics: Adversity
The Louver is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.
—Jean Cocteau
Topics: Museums
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Michel Houellebecq French Author
- Victor Hugo French Novelist
- Anatole France French Novelist
- Remy de Gourmont French Poet, Writer
- Guillaume Apollinaire Italian-born French Poet
- Sacha Guitry French Actor, Dramatist
- Marcel Proust French Novelist
- Gustave Flaubert French Novelist
- Arthur Rimbaud French Poet
- Voltaire French Philosopher, Author
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