Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Jean Cocteau (French Poet, Artist)

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963,) fully Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau, was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist, and critic. His plays are noted for their striking blend of poetry, irony, and fantasy.

Born in Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, Cocteau achieved success early with La Lampe d’Aladin (1909, ‘Aladdin’s Lamp,’) and exploited it. He ran the gamut of experience, first enjoying a spectacular conversion to Roman Catholicism through the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain.

This was followed by a scornful repudiation of Cocteau’s mentor, the use of opium, and a search for salvation through solitude. Nevertheless, he had astonishing success with whatever he touched and figured as a sponsor of Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Giorgio de Chirico, and the group of young French composers known as Les Six. Cocteau’s work was marked by the vivacity and pyrotechnic brilliance as an actor, director, scenario writer, novelist, critic, and artist. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1955.

Significant works are his novels Le Grand Écart (1923; Miscreant, 1925,) Thomas l’imposteur (1923; Thomas the Imposter, 1925,) Les Enfants terribles (1929; Children of the Game, 1929,) and plays Les mariés de la tour Eiffel (1921; The Eiffel Tower Wedding Party, 1963,) Orphée (1926; Orpheus, 1933) and L’Aigle à deux têtes (1946; The Eagle has Two Heads, 1948.) His films include Le Sang d’un poète (1930, The Blood of a Poet,) La Belle et la Bête (1945, Beauty and the Beast,) Orphee (adapted from his play, 1949) and Le Testament d’Orphée (1960.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by 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
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

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